The Healing Continues
by DisneyLover100
Summary: Book Two: The continuing love story of Spencer and Chelsea. Spencer has a life outside of the BAU, an AA sponsor, a girlfriend, and a reason to go home at night. He kept Chelsea a secret, but a case comes up that gives him the perfect opportunity to introduce her to the team. Staying true to the CM universe, Morgan's not the only one who cares about Reid at the end of Amplification
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** I'm sure it is obvious, but as a disclaimer - I do NOT own Criminal Minds or any of its character, but I'd love to. :)

This is a continuation of my first story Damaged: Time to Heal. All of the characters that I established with back-stories in my first FanFiction continue here. It would be helpful to read that first to understand my version of the CM world. This story starts where that finished.

I recently "updated" that story. If you have read it in the past, it has not changed other than to fix some typos and try to shorten a few things. I hope you enjoy and leave reviews.

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Spencer was happy he had told the team about Bob, his AA sponsor. He knew he would be spending a lot of time with Chelsea and the team would now believe that he was going out with Bob and his other friends, which meant he didn't have to explain yet. He felt he was doing a good job at keeping it a secret, but even after telling them about Bob, most of the team was suspecting there was someone special in his life. They didn't want to press, they were content that he was happy and not falling back on his habit, but they kept watching him for answers.

The team was only called on a few more cases in February. The first was the next day February 17th. Rossi was away on his book tour and stumbled upon a case. He called Hotch and the team studied all of the recent murders in Cleveland and figured out that the unsub was mimicking past famous serial killers. The unsub was young and was still testing out his murder compulsions. They were able to capture him and save one victim. They all felt fortunate they were able to apprehend the unsub before he became more experienced and better at hiding his tracks. As usual Chelsea was very happy in the fact they were able to let the victims' families know what happened very shortly after their loved ones were killed and that they had saved another person.

Just before 5:00 on Monday, February 23 Hotch called the Team into the conference room. Emily and Morgan both groaned, they had almost made it through the day without a case. "We've got a case?" Emily questioned as they were all walking towards the room. Spencer pulled out his phone and sent a quick text to let Chelsea know they just got a case and to go to dinner without him. He would contact her with details later.

As they moved into the room, JJ answered, "Not really." Emily started to reply when Hotch got everyone's attention.

"Austin Texas." Hotch started as JJ put the photos of 4 young girls on the screen. "Every 3 days a brunette, green eyed college student is abducted from her apartment, 2 mornings later she is found bound, gagged, sexually assaulted and dumped behind a strip mall."

JJ pushed a button and 2 photos of the first victim appeared on the screen. On the left a girl was smiling in her high school cap and gown and on the right a close up of her face badly bruised on an autopsy table. "This is Celeste Peterson a 22 year old student at St. Edward's University a private Catholic school. She was abducted on Friday night February 13 sometime after 11:00pm. She and her boyfriend, Ted Brady, were on the phone talking about Valentine's Day plans and hung up around 11:00. He told the police she wanted to get some sleep because she had an early shift at the grocery store where she worked. She never showed up to work and her boss contacted her mother in Dallas when she had not arrived 4 hours after her shift. Her mother called Ted who had a key to her apartment. When he got there the door was closed, but unlocked, nothing seemed disturbed but her purse with her keys, wallet and cell phone were on the kitchen counter. He contacted the police, but they refused to investigate because she had been gone less than 24 hours. Celeste's body was found the next morning February 15 next to a dumpster behind a small strip mall in the South side of Austin".

JJ continued to talk about the victims as their photos were shown on the screen. Roxanne Murphy a 21-year-old student at the University of Texas was abducted on the 16th and dumped on the 18th, Katarina Rameriz, 22 also from the University of Texas was abducted the next day on the 19th and dumped on 21st.

After all of the details of the deceased had been thoroughly gone over, Hotch continued. "They all are college students, have similar coloring and builds, are approximately the same age, lived alone in studio apartments, and were raised by either a single mother or father living somewhere in Texas. The police cannot find any connections between them."

JJ stepped up to the screen again. "The latest victim, ironically named Austin, was abducted from her home last night. She will be 22 tomorrow and is a student at Concordia University, a private Lutheran school."

Morgan was taking in all of the information and asked Hotch, "Shouldn't we be going over this on the plane? It seems like we should be in Austin as soon as possible."

Hotch shook his head, "We haven't been invited."

Exclamations and shouts of "What?" were heard from everyone. Morgan voiced what everyone in the room was thinking. "They have 3 dead college students and one missing, and they don't want our help?"

Hotch looked at Morgan, "The local sheriff in charge has had some unfortunate dealings with the FBI and seems to think we would only be there to make him and his department look bad." Morgan started to comment, but Hotch put up his hand to silence him. "He only contacted us to help with a profile because he is receiving a lot of pressure from the Mayor and even the Governor. We will look over all of this info, give them a geographic profile and whatever help we can from here. Hopefully with our input they will be able to solve this soon. If not, at least we have a head start on the case if we do get called in to help later."

As Hotch assigned different aspects of the case to the agents. Reid went to get coffee and give Chelsea some more information. Her old roommate JoAnn and her fiancé were in town for the day and they had planned to go out to dinner with them. Spencer had broken the news with the text, but he still wanted to let her know he was sorry about missing dinner and it looked like he would be staying at the office for the night.

Even though Chelsea came from a law enforcement family and understood the time demands of his job, he could hear the disappointment in her voice. "I really wanted you to meet JoAnn", she stated "but I know you need to try and save that poor girl. I can't believe the Sheriff doesn't want you to go to Austin to help. I always hated the stories Grandpa told me about cop turf wars. Why grown men have pissing matches over who gets credit for saving a victim is repulsive."

Spencer had to laugh at her choice of words. She rarely cussed or used any vulgar language. "I wish they would understand that we would only be there to assist, not come and try to make headlines by solving the case," he replied choosing not to comment on her comment. "At least they called us and are letting us go over all of the case files and witness transcripts. If the unsub keeps to his prior time schedule this last girl is most likely dead and will be dumped in the next 12 hours. If we can pinpoint a dumpsite maybe they can catch him. If not, I think they will have to let us help and go to Austin tomorrow."

They talked for a few more minutes and he again apologized for missing dinner. "I really do want to met JoAnn."

"I know. Go help with that profile before someone else gets hurt."

He was smiling as he headed to get some coffee and bumped into Prentiss. She stopped, looked like she was about to say something and then just smiled and headed back towards the conference room. Reid shook his head and watched her leave wondering what she thought she knew.

When he arrived back in the conference room, Prentiss had attached a large map of the Austin area up on a corkboard and brought in multi-colored pushpins and markers to help Reid with his geographic profile. He started to get to work and their thoughts were not completely on the case.

Morgan was mumbling about the fact that another college girl's body was most like going to be dumped in the next 12 hours as he and Garcia headed to her lair to see if they could find any connections between the victims that the Austin PD might have missed. JJ, Rossi and Hotch were looking through all of the case files to see if they could piece anything together from the interviews with friends and families, autopsy reports, and crime scene photos.

A pattern started to appear as Reid placed the final markers on the map. All of the dumpsites were within a 3-mile radius of the girl's University. All of the strip malls had at least one coffee shop that opened by 6:00 am and a bar that closed at 2:00am with foot traffic from employees and students from around 5:30am to 2:15am but almost completely dead in the early morning hours. Garcia had found that there were no security cameras in the rear of any of these malls. A perfect way for the unsub to get in and out without being seen.

At around 2:00am Eastern Time, they had finished with their profile and Garcia had sent everything to the Austin PD. They didn't have enough information for victimology, but there were 3 strip mall locations that fit the profile where Austin's body may be dumped. As much as they hoped she was still alive, if the unsub was following his usual pattern, Austin was most likely already dead.

Having done everything they could do for the night and hoping that the information they provided would allow the Austin PD to apprehend the suspect, they all headed home. Spencer didn't want to wake up Chelsea so he headed to his own apartment. It was after 3:00am when he finally was in bed, but he had a hard time falling asleep. As he was tossing and turning, he realized that he now slept better with Chelsea at her place.

He fell asleep around 5:00am and his phone rang at 7:00am. JJ apologized for calling so early, but she wanted to let him know that the Austin PD had caught the suspect while he was dumping the body. Their profile had been correct and he was at one of the 3 locations they had predicted. The Sheriff had even apologized to Hotch and told him he was sorry that he had not contacted the BAU earlier. Also, Hotch had given everyone the day off and to be back in the office tomorrow morning.

Reid was now awake and went to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. While the coffee was brewing he took a shower, shaved and dressed. He grabbed a cup of coffee and waited until 8:00am to call Chelsea. She was sorry that he had missed meeting JoAnn and her fiancé, but she had a great time at dinner with them.

He went over to spend the day with her. As they were walking hand in hand to a local restaurant for lunch, she said, "Those poor girls. I'm glad you were able to help, but I wish you could have saved the last one." Spencer just nodded. "I'm especially glad you didn't have to leave town and have the day off to spend with me," she said smiling and squeezed his hand.

He squeezed it back. He was still amazed how comfortable he was with her. Over his life he saw happy couples holding hands and never thought he could find someone that would make him so happy. He didn't notice her watching him. "Penny for your thoughts." She said smiling.

He smiled back. "I was just thinking how happy I am right now" he said truthfully. "I didn't sleep well last night, but I don't feel tired here with you."

"Why didn't you sleep well? Nightmares?" she wondered aloud.

He shook his head and shyly said, "I was lonely." He felt slightly silly as it had only been less than 2 weeks from their first night together.

She laughed "Me too. I'm glad you are comfortable sleeping at my place. You should have just come over no matter how late it was." She blushed a little as she finished saying, "It would have been worth waking up in the middle of the night if it meant I would get to wake up in the morning with you."

He said, "I'll remember that" with a big smile on his face.

#

Chelsea wanted to arrange for Spencer to meet her mom. Her mother was extremely concerned that she was dating someone in law enforcement and was unhappy with Bob for setting them up. She could tell that Chelsea was in love and all she could focus on was that she didn't want her to be hurt if something were to happen to him on the job. Since Spencer had the day off she called her mom and Bob and then made reservations for the four of them at the rifle club that night.

Spencer was very nervous about meeting her mom; he had never been in a situation like this before and was very uncomfortable. "What am I supposed to say? Hi, I'm the guy sleeping with your daughter?" He was starting to panic and was nervously chatting in the car with Chelsea all the way to the club. As they were walking in, Chelsea took his hand, squeezed it tightly and told him "My mother is going to love you. I promise. Just be yourself."

"Being myself is what I'm worried about."

Chelsea smiled squeezed his hand again reassuringly. "Remember my mom loves literature and is an educator. She loves conversations with intelligent people and you are going to blow her away."

The dinner went well and Elizabeth, Liz, was impressed with Spencer. After a few awkward minutes of discussion about the dangers of his job, the conversation changed to literature. Liz asked how his family felt about his job and Spencer mentioned that his mother was a retired English literature professor. Chelsea had mentioned it, but Liz was too focused on his job to think about that. After that most of the night was a back and forth discussion of classic literature from around the world. Bob and Chelsea kept quiet most of the night silently communicating and smiling at the conversation around them. The evening had gone just the way the two of them had planned.

Spencer and Chelsea continued to spend most of his free time together with him staying most nights at her place. Near the end of February, Hotch was asked to help with a case privately and flew to Dallas alone to find out the details. That night he asked the rest of the team to come and help with the sensitive case. A high-end prostitute was killing her very high profile clients. No potential victims wanted to admit they were having extra-marital affairs especially an illegal one and did not want to help with the investigation. Even now that Spencer was in a relationship, he was still uncomfortable talking about sexual acts with a "madam" that had offered to help. That night when he called Chelsea from the hotel, she could hear the tension in his voice. Just talking with her helped him work through his issues. The next day he was focused again and helped come up with a plan to take the suspect into custody.


	2. Chapter 2

By early March, the Abbot & Carson Brokerage case was taking almost all of Chelsea's attention. She finished the other cases she had been working on and had declined most other work. After the one defendant accused of insider trading had made his case on the MSNBC program; the other three defendants had started to talk publicly. The prosecution had petitioned the judge for a gag order, but was unsuccessful. Public opinion was mounting against the firm and in favor of the four defendants. The case was very time consuming and she was working on it many evenings and weekends.

When Spencer was not working a case and if Chelsea had to work late, he would stop and bring back dinner for them both. She had all of her work spread out over one end of her dining room table for weeks. To keep himself busy when she was working, Spencer brought a stack of books from the library every week to her place. As busy as she was, sometimes she would just stop and watch him read. It fascinated her that he was able to absorb that much information as quickly as he did.

Although Spencer was not a huge fan of online reading, he found the much of the information he wanted to keep up on was free from the Library of Congress. Before he met Chelsea, he would go on many weekends and evening just to look up city maps, traffic patterns, Census records, and medial research. None of the materials he was interested in were allowed to be checked out, but most of it was now available on-line.

Reading online was much slower because the computer could not load a page as fast as he could read, but printing tens of thousands of pages per week was not a realistic option. He brought the laptop he had at home for work to Chelsea's place weeks ago. He owned a laptop partly because he would sometimes receive an email he needed to read before he would head to a crime scene, but he also had it for The Library of Congress's vast online catalogue. When he was about to head out to a city for a case, he could download a current map of the city with updated population and other pertinent information the team might need.

He felt that although it was not ideal, reading from his laptop at Chelsea's place was worth it. He liked that he could be with her reading while she worked.

#

In mid March, Prentiss had a visit from an old friend who told her about a mutual friend that had died under suspicious circumstances. Hotch authorized her some private time to look into it. At first Morgan was the only other agent involved. But when another victim with ties to Prentiss' friend also died of natural causes, according to the cornier, Spencer and Rossi were also looking into it. After some investigation, Spencer, Rossi and Prentiss were working under the assumption that someone was trying to drive out the victims' demons with an exorcism.

Morgan was outspoken that he didn't think they had a real case. He sympathized with Prentiss about her friend's loss, but did not want to be involved in what he thought was a private and religious matter. Spencer did not believe in exorcisms, but he knew that throughout history it was used on people with Schizophrenia. It was often believed that the voices a Schizophrenic patient heard were that of the devil or other demons. He not only wanted to help Prentiss, he felt the need to help the victims that were being held against their will because their families didn't understand their illness.

The case struck a nerve in all three of the agents. Prentiss because of her friendship with the victims, Rossi because of his close ties to the Catholic religion and the way it was being abused to harm instead of help people, and Reid because of he felt that this is how his mother would be treated by the unsubs.

At the home of the third victim, Chelsea's friend John and his rookie partner were with the family. John came over to say hi and Spencer introduced them to Rossi and Prentiss. After they had been asked to leave by one of the other DC cops, John came over to Spencer to apologize. "The deceased's mother is really upset and she asked us to make you leave. I'm sorry."

Spencer told him that it was OK, they did not have any official capacity here, and they had just been working on a theory involving other similar deaths.

John nodded and pulled him aside so they could talk in private. "I've heard rumors. Many in the MPDC think there is some type of a S&M club in this area. Three young healthy men, all from wealthy families, dying from natural causes is suspicious. Add the fact that they all apparently were tied to their beds and had candles burning in their room; it makes cops start to gossip. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I don't think this will be the last."

Spencer thanked John and climbed into the back seat of the waiting SUV. He told Rossi and Prentiss of John's theory. They both were interested in how he knew John. On the ride back to the BAU they discussed John and the MPDC cops' theories. They were sure that their profile of the exorcism was correct, because they had more history on all three victims than the police did, but knowing that they were not the only department with suspicions was interesting.

Once they got back to the BAU, Emily pulled Spencer aside and asked, "Who's Chelsea?"

Spencer looked down and put his hands in his pockets. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I specifically heard your friend John ask you how Chelsea was doing." She stopped and looked at how uncomfortable he looked. "Never mind. You know you can always talk to me, right?"

Spencer nodded as she walked away and started to breathe again. He hadn't even realized he was holding his breath. He hurried to his desk before she could change her mind and ask more questions he was not prepared to answer.

The next weekend after they had closed the case, Spencer and Chelsea went to John and Becky's home for dinner, John asked about the case. Spencer did not discuss any of the details about the victims shared trip to Rome or that one was a friend of Prentiss, but did tell him that the deaths were do to exorcisms. All of the victims were diagnosed with mental illness and or drug additions and the suspects were trying to rid them of their demons. Because they were unsuccessful of ridding the patients of their illnesses, they continued to try to drive out the demons until they died of either heart failure or dehydration.

Spencer continued, "This was done against the victims' will, but the families were aware of what was happening." He was quick to point out that none of the families were hoping for that outcome, but they all seemed to think it was the best course of action even after the deaths. None of them could be charged with a crime, but all four at the table would have liked to see that happen.

Both John and Becky were saddened that someone would use a religions type ceremony to try and rid someone of a mental illness. John said, "I see people harm or kill others way too many times in the name of God."

Becky continued his thought, "I know, and to blame a mental illness on a demon or possession in this day and age, is unbelievable."

Chelsea and Spencer had a similar conversation the night they had apprehended the Priest that was responsible. Being Catholic, Chelsea was even more upset by the actions of this man from Rome and was very upset that he had diplomatic immunity. Plus she knew how Spencer felt because his mother. He had witnessed this disease very personally and he was in constant fear of being diagnosed with it himself.

After the heavy topic of this case, they were all ready to talk about something else over dinner. The rest of the evening was pleasant small talk about Chelsea's work and John and Becky's kids.

#

Chelsea was now getting more information from public sources than the information she had received from the Abbot & Carson Brokerage itself. Documents were mounting on her dining room table. On a normal case, she would not discuss anything until the case was closed. But this case was unusual. Now that the case was made public on MSNBC as well as other stations and newspapers, she had very little sensitive information that Spencer could not find in public sources himself. Chelsea had been hired for an internal audit of the broker's books for an insider trading scandal of four of their former employees. That was not uncommon. A brokerage would try to cover their interests. They needed to know what information was going to go public in trial. It is a normal response before your livelihood is made public record. Any information she uncovered could be subpoenaed for the trial, but companies had to turn over all of their information to outside inspectors anyway and felt better prepared for a PR campaign if they had all of the details themselves before the trial.

She was given full access to the company's books, but much of the information that was being presented publicly by the defendants was not in the files. One night, she thought she figured out what was happening and decided to ask for Spencer's opinion. All of the pertinent information was now public knowledge and the small amount of information that was still private she removed before showing Spencer. In less than 2 hours of going over her notes and figures, he had come to the same conclusion that she had. Someone in the company was embezzling funds and was trying to blame it on the four insider trading defendants. There were only two people at the company that had the ability to pull this off and one of them was to person that hired her. The case fascinated Spencer and he wanted to help Chelsea partly because of their relationship, but also because he wanted to find out who was behind this.

Spencer was confused as to why someone that was embezzling would hire a FA to go over the books. Chelsea pointed out that all of the incriminating evidence was not in the files she was given, but in the paperwork made public by the defendants. The owners of Abbot & Carson Brokerage had not counted on the other information getting out. She had obtained much of the information she was going over, from public records.

Reid was starting to be afraid for her safety. There was a lot of money involved and he had seen people kill over much less than this. The next day, he went to Garcia and asked her to do a background check on the two principals. James Walker and Carlos Martinez, and asked her to keep it quiet. He wanted to know whom Chelsea was dealing with and if she could be in danger. The Abbot & Carson namesakes had long sense retired and Walker and Martinez had been running the brokerage for the last 10 years. Walker had hired her to access the financial liabilities of the insider trading case. Garcia's search had yielded nothing in either his or Martinez' criminal background. But both men had a lot of assets including homes, boats and several bank accounts. Both had transferred large money to accounts to a bank in the Caymans several times over the last two years.

The trial was not scheduled until the first part of April and Chelsea would have to continue her research. She was hired to find out about the insider trading and hopefully she could find out and prove who was embezzling also.

When Spencer told Chelsea about the suspicious money transfers, she set out to find a way to confirm that information without letting anyone know she found out about it from Garcia's unauthorized search.


	3. Chapter 3

Spencer was staying with Chelsea most nights when he is not away on a case. At first he would go back to his apartment frequently to get clean clothes and get his laundry together. Recently he began to take advantage of the concierge services in Chelsea's building. A local dry cleaner and fluff and fold had same day service with pick up and delivery in Chelsea's building. Chelsea also had a washer and dryer in her apartment. Spencer still went back to his own apartment to exchange a some clothes, pick up his mail and occasionally stay the night if he came back very late from a case or Chelsea stayed the night at a friends, her mom's, or grandpa's.

Chelsea wanted to ask Spencer to move in with her, but she knew that until he told the rest of the team about her, he wouldn't even consider it. She loved having him with her as often as he was able, but would still prefer to have him permanently move in. With plans of him hopefully moving in some day, she decided to update a few items in her apartment. When she purchased the apartment, the kitchen had been upgraded with high-end appliances and granite counters.

The bathrooms all had standard builder's grade cabinets and tile counters and Chelsea had always wanted to change them. To save money the builders had also installed 30" high vanities. Even at 5'6" the counters felt short for her but Spencer had to really bend down. She also had plans to also update all of the builder installed closet rods. They were poorly designed, but living alone she had not bothered to change them. She scheduled all three of the bathrooms to be updated in mid March and they went to say at Spencer's apartment.

Spencer's one bedroom apartment was small, clean and full of books and some small items and toys. It had a small kitchen with a table set up under the window with two chairs. In the living area there was a beautiful antique leather wing back chair with a bronze floor lamp from the 1940s next to it. A small antique wood writing desk was against one wall. On the writing portion of the desk was his seldom used laptop, a pair of bronzed baby shoes, and a vintage writing set, including feather quill pen, ink well and blotter on a writing stand. On the top of the desk were 2 Star Wars collectibles and two framed photos. One photo was of a 12-year-old Spencer at his High School Graduation with his mom and the other of JJ, Will with Henry from the Baptism.

When he had admitted his mother in the Bennington _Sanitarium_ in Las Vegas, he had boxed up and stored some of his childhood items and some things from his mother's travels that she was not allowed to have with her. For liability reasons they did not want to have patients keep expensive items in their rooms. His mother had traveled to the United Kingdom many times before she was married and had picked up some first edition novels was well as some Royal Daulton and Hummel-Goebel figurines. To a stranger seeing his apartment for the first time, the many dainty knickknacks and childhood toys would seem out of place on the large wood bookshelf. But anyone that knew Spencer understood that he did not display things due to fashion; he wanted to keep some of his good childhood memories near him.

The bedroom had a full size bed, one nightstand and a 5 drawer tall dresser. The closet was divided with one side for his clothes and the other side had shelves that stored some boxes of old photos, 3 chess sets, college textbooks, Halloween masks and collectables, many first edition books in several languages and his shoes. His TV was also in the closet. He rarely watched, but occasionally watched news reports, historical events and on occasion one of the team would call him to see information on a past or current case. He also had a small DVD collection of documentaries and sci-fi movies and he sometimes rented movies from a local shop.

On March 18th, while they were living at Spencer's apartment, he was called away to Boston for a case. Chelsea knew where he was and Internet stories of "The Boston Reaper" started to show up in Yahoo News. She remembered reading _The Night of the Reaper_ by a reporter years ago with her grandfather. She looked up the book and the reporter was named Roy Colson. It had been 10 years since The Reaper had killed anyone. She assumed this was a copycat like most people did, but she still wanted Spencer to be extra careful. The Reaper's kills had seemed random and he didn't have a specific type of victim as many serial killers do. She didn't want Spencer or any of the team to be the next victim.

Spencer called her each night to let her know he was OK and to make sure she was fine. He was still worried about the case she was working on and his apartment building didn't have the same security measures that hers did. After his case was over, before he got on the jet, he was able to call her from his hotel room. He was relieved that they had caught the unsub and told her that it was actually George Foyet, the original Reaper, not a copycat. He had posed as a victim 10 years ago and was as the only one that survived the attack. He explained that Hotch had worked on the original case and Foyet had made him a challenge and Hotch and won. Chelsea was glad to know that the reaper was behind bars, the families would have some closure after all of these years and that Spencer was on his way home. She got permission from Spencer to tell her grandpa the story because they had read the book together.

About five hours later, when she was at her grandpa's house telling him the story, she received a call from Spencer that Foyet had escaped from jail and they had found all of the plans for the local jails and prisons in one of his hideaways. He had been planning this for a long time. Chelsea was really worried that he might want to come after the entire team for catching him, but Spencer was sure that he was safe. He felt that Foyet was going to go somewhere and regroup and set up new aliases before he did anything.

Two days after he was back home, the bathroom renovations were all completed at Chelsea's apartment and Spencer continued to spend most of his off time at her place. The last week in March, Spencer was called to Royal, Indiana on an arson case that involved killing multiple people. The night before he left, two agents from the FBI White Collar united showed up at Chelsea's apartment. They had a subpoena for all of her Abbot and Carson Brokerage case files. Spencer looked over the document and confirmed it was legitimate.

The subpoena included any notes she had on the case. Her notes were a combination of the SEC's case against the agents and her own personal investigation into the embezzling. As the agents gathered all of the information, one of them started to look through Chelsea's files. He asked Chelsea, "You have some impressive conclusions here in your notes. How long have you been aware of the embezzlement?"

Chelsea answered truthfully. "I've has suspicions for almost a month, but I've just been getting detailed proof together over the last week." She was thankful she had never written down any of the information Spencer had found from Garcia's search. That would have been included in the information the FBI confiscated and would have been hard to explain.

"Would you be willing to testify to all of this?"

"I signed a Non Disclosure Agreement when I was hired by the brokerage firm to investigate the insider trading infractions. I know much of this information is public record, but I could only testify if you subpoenaed me. My notes are thorough, and overlap both cases. They might be difficult for someone else to interpret." She implied she would be a willing and helpful witness, but could not do so of her own accord without violating the client's confidentially agreement.

While Spencer was in Indiana working on the arson case, he continued to worry about Chelsea being called to testify in the case. Two days after Spencer left, she received the subpoena to testify in the embezzling case. She told Spencer she was happy, she wanted to testify and put these guys away. Although the two men did not have any record of violence, there was so much money at stake; he knew she could be in danger. He had seen people kill for much less.

Spencer had called both her grandpa and John hoping they would help protect her while he was gone or convince her to stay with her grandpa until the trial. Chelsea was getting a little annoyed at all of the attention, but agreed to stay with her grandpa whenever Spencer was not around.

When Spencer was on the jet home after they had captured the arsonist, Chelsea texted him that Walker and Martinez had reached a plea bargain agreement. Her records combined with that the FBI already had, convinced them they would be found guilty in the trial. They had also been giving immunity for some of their crimes by helping the SEC fix some of the software loopholes that had made their embalmment possible.

There were no accurate records of how much money had been sent offshore and Spencer and Chelsea realized that both defendants realized that with the plea bargain and the immunity deal, they would receive limited time in a low security "Club Fed" prison and be out in 10 years or maybe less for good behavior. They were both young men and probably thought it was worth it for a very rich retirement out of the country after they were released. It upset Chelsea that even with jail time they basically had gotten away with stealing millions of dollars from people's retirement accounts. Not only would the victims never see the money again, Walker and Martinez were not getting much of a punishment. Spencer sympathized with her. Many times after catching the unsub, the system didn't always work. He had seen dangerous people go free, but he had to believe that what they all did made a difference. He was also relieved that the pair had willingly made the deal and not made any threats on Chelsea or any of the other witnesses.

Chelsea still needed to testily at the trial of the four defendants suspected insider trading. That was the case she originally had been internally hired to investigate and she was subpoenaed for that trial also. She contacted the SEC to let them know the FBI had taken all of her records and notes in the embezzling case. She was told she would have access to them 24 hours before the trial and the day of the trial.

During the trial, two of the defendants were found guilty and the other two were not. It was determined that Walker and Martinez had set up the other two defendants up in an effort to distract everyone from their embezzling. Two of the brokers that were accused of insider trading went public because they knew they were innocent. The other two followed with information because they figured out that someone was embezzling and they hoped that the other case would get more attention and they might get immunity if they had information.

If the brokerage had not come under scrutiny from the SEC, the owners would have been able to keep their embezzlement scam going for at least another year.

It was unclear if she would ever get paid for her work on this case. The brokerage had been shut down and the federal government had seized all of the firm's assets. It was disappointing because she had worked several months on the insider trading case. She understood that the other work against the brokerage's owners was on her own time.

A week after the second trial, Chelsea got good news from one of the FBI White Collar agents. He told Chelsea there was a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Walker and Martinez in the embalmment case. She was never hired to do that work and her paper trail had helped make a deal that would put them in jail and keep other firms from working the same scam. She was relieved because she had planned to use the income from this case on her bathroom remodels and she had not done any other work in a month.


	4. Chapter 4

Things settled down and Chelsea was much less busy after the insider trading and embezzlement cases ended. It was typical that she had some very busy times and slower times, but she usually had new cases overlapping the ending of a finished case. She had spent the last 5 weeks working only this case and didn't have anything else pending. She contacted all of her past clients to let them know she was available if they had any work and received several of small simple jobs.

Spencer was available more evenings and weekends also. After he returned from Indiana, he was not called away on a case again for several weeks. Chelsea was glad that she was finally able to spend some more time with him. Most of the month of March had been tied up with her case. They made time to go out on some dates, but did not have much down time just to go on walks or relax together.

One night while they were having a relaxing evening in front of the fireplace; Chelsea decided to bring up sensitive subject she had been thinking about since Valentine's Day. She set down her brandy snifter and looked Spencer in the eyes and asked, "Are you absolutely, completely positive that you do not want to have a biological child?"

He stared at her silently for a few seconds before he started to get upset. He almost slammed down his brandy and rambling that he knew it was too good to be true. He stood up and angrily said "You told me you were OK with not having your own children, you know I can't…" swallowing and looking into the fire he looked as if he couldn't decide to scream or cry. He took a deep breath and his voice softened, "I just can't take that chance." Shaking his head, "I knew I wouldn't be able to give you what you wanted."

At first Chelsea was so shocked at his response that she just sat there with her mouth hanging open. Then she got mad at herself for how she had phrased the question. Of course he would think that she was changing her mind with a question like that, but she was also upset that he would think that little of her. She got a hold of herself and stood up next to Spencer just as he finished talking. His outburst had upset her and she almost started to scream at him for thinking she was that insensitive, but his sad expression as he looked at her saying that he couldn't give her what she wanted almost broke her heart.

"Spencer" she started, when he didn't seem to be focused on her, she touched his arm and said his name again louder this time. "Spencer, I didn't mean that. Listen to me, that is NOT what I meant. I'm sorry to upset you."

She took his arm and guided him back to the couch. "I'm so sorry." She started again. "I was asking about a more permanent type of birth control." His eyes softened and got a bit wider as he realized where the conversation was going.

"Tomorrow, I have a doctor's appointment. Just a yearly check up and I have been thinking about asking for a birth control pill prescription. I'm confident that we are both safe from any disease, but it would be nice to be a little more… spontaneous." She felt her checks flush a little and Spencer's eyes looked downward. She wasn't sure if he was embarrassed about the direction of the conversation or his earlier outburst. Maybe both.

"But," she paused, not quite sure how to phrase it, knowing she had done very poorly earlier, "if you are absolutely and completely positive that you never want to have your own child with me or anyone else, there could be a more permanent solution."

She waited for his reaction. "A vasectomy." He whispered. She just nodded. "I never thought I would ever been in a relationship so I've never even thought about that before."

She quickly said, "I know it's a big step. You don't need to make a decision tonight. I just thought about it because of my appointment tomorrow. I wanted to let you know I was thinking about going on the pill, it's something that affects both of us. I just thought I'd mention another option that had crossed my mind."

He nodded and picked up his brandy and seemed to be deep in thought as he took a sip. "That does make sense. The pill has a very high rate of success if used correctly. There are some side effects, but it is safe in most women and safer than many of the complications that can happen with child birth." Chelsea could see he was working through all of the pros and cons and kept quiet while trying not to smile. He was so analytical in everything and he was very cute when he was concentrating on something.

"It would be much safer for me to have a vasectomy than for you to take the pill. It also would be a long-term solution. You shouldn't have to be on a prescription for the rest of your life when there is another answer." He paused again, but Chelsea remained quiet. "Short term it would be difficult, I'd need to get the time off work and make some excuse as to why I needed it off." He looked straight at Chelsea, acknowledging she was there for the first time since he started to think. "They are profilers. Lying isn't easy around them."

He took another sip and stared at the fire. "There would be short term pain and I would need to refuse any narcotics offered without explaining why. If I were able to make the appointment on a Friday afternoon, I could tell Hotch I had a dental procedure and that I needed the weekend to recover. That way if a case were to come up over the weekend, I could meet up with them wherever they were at on Monday without questions. I'd have to cancel if we were called away before that."

Spencer smiled at Chelsea and said, "I guess I just decided didn't I?" He got serious again and continued, "I'm so sorry that I yelled at you. I am always so afraid you are going to leave me. It's something I think I prepare for and then when you said that I thought it was your way of trying to leave." He sighed, "I should trust you, I'm really sorry."

Chelsea hugged him, "It's OK. I didn't say it very well, I was just not sure what you would think and I was embarrassed and I didn't mean to sound like I had changed my mind about kids. Please know that I'm not leaving you. I love you and I'm not going anywhere." The conversation reminded her that even after 3 months together, he still had real abandonment issues. Some subjects still brought deep emotions to the surface and she wanted to make sure she was more careful in the future not to bring up bad memories.

As he told her he loved her too, she pulled away as she smiled to lighten the mood, "I think I'm glad I'm not an unsub. You can really get a scary face. I wouldn't want that face interrogating me. I'd fold in a minute!"

He smiled, "Unfortunately, the unsubs usually aren't that intimidated by me. But I am truly sorry if I scared you."

"Don't worry, I'm a big girl and I'm fine. I guess that means I don't need to get a prescription tomorrow?"

"No, I think the more permanent solution makes the best sense. I'll call my doctor to get a referral and see when I can get an appointment."

"Did you realize you said 'for the rest of your life' when you talked about me going on the pill?" she whispered smiling. He nodded and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.

#

On Monday April 6th, the team was called to South Padre Island in Texas. Fortunately, that had given Spencer the weekend to recover from the simple procedure. He was surprised at how fast he was able to get the appointment. Someone had cancelled that Friday, and with a 7am check up and pre-op on Wednesday morning he was scheduled 2 days later. He told Hotch he was getting a root canal and needed Friday afternoon off. He didn't mention the weekend. They were rarely called in on a weekend, if they weren't on-call. He decided to take his chances and no call had come in.

The case involved two male college students raped and murdered while on Spring Break. The local authorities asked for help because they were afraid that more students may be killed and after the weeklong school break was over, the unsub may disappear.

When Spencer came home from the case, he was very distraught. They discovered that the unsub had a multiple personality disorder similar to Tobias Hankle. He came home late after visiting Amanda (Adam's feminine persona) at the hospital. He described the case to Chelsea as they were cuddling in her living room in front of her fireplace. They were drinking hot chocolate and listening to some John Coltrane albums she had downloaded on iTunes.

He was saying "I should have seen it sooner. I could have helped Adam before Amanda took over."

"You are being too hard on yourself, I know I always tell you that you are super human.' She said smiling, "But you can't save everyone."

Spencer smiled also. "That's exactly what Morgan said."

She laughed. "See… great minds think alike." She continued a bit more somber, "Besides, Amanda permanently taking over may be the best thing for him."

"How do you figure?"

"You said that he, as Amanda, raped and murdered four students. Even if a hospital were to help him and rid him of his alternate personalities, Adam would still stand trial for the murders. Do you think that the local Texas prosecutors, the victims' families and public opinion would just let him be a free man? They would spend years trying to prove that he was faking it. He even told you that he hated all of the rich drunk frat boys that partied and walked around like they owned the island. Your testimony would not do him any favors in a trial."

He started to argue, "But it wasn't him…" She just looked at him. He continued, "I know. You are right. Now he is in the psychiatric ward of the hospital and protected by Amanda. She is in a safe place and well taken care of. The prosecutors are having him evaluated, but it doesn't look like she will have to deal with the trial at all. He most likely will be found not competent to stand trial." He paused and Chelsea could tell he was thinking about Adam. "I just wanted to help him become himself again"

"I know." Chelsea knew that this case was more personal because Spencer would always be thankful that the real Tobias had saved his life with CPR and he felt a connection to Adam because of it. She also thought that he might be a little more emotional now because of the vasectomy last week. Knowing you never want to have kids and having it become a reality that you never will have kids probably was taking a small emotional toll on him as well.

Chelsea stood up and cleaned up the two cups that held the hot chocolate and the plate from the mini cupcakes her mom had made. Spencer took her cue and turned off the gas fireplace and the stereo system. Chelsea had plans to help distract him from the day. She took his hand and turned off the lights as they went to the bedroom. They were both glad that he had decided to have the procedure. It made them feel more connected and even closer than before.


	5. Chapter 5

On the following Thursday morning Hotch gathered the entire team and told them to cancel all of their plans for the weekend, the justice department had specifically requested the help of Hotch and his team to go through boxes of documents for the Randal Jackson trial next Tuesday. The trial against Mr. Jackson and Action Brokerage had made national headlines. There had been some chatter that the evidence was compromised and with Hotch's prosecutor background and his team's stellar record, they had been asked to sift through all of the evidence to ensure that everything was in shape for a trial. Morgan was grumbling both because he hated paperwork and he had plans to go visit his mom on the weekend.

By 4:30 in the afternoon they had sorted through the 122 boxes of evidence that were delivered. They had divided the evidence into three sections. There were 52 file boxes of general financial evidence: police reports, photos, depositions, and personal financial records from the principals of Action Brokerage.

Thirty of the boxes were filled with hand written journals dating back from 1989 until last year when all of the evidence was seized. The paperwork from the New York White Collar office listed it as personal journals from Randal Jackson. It would take most people weeks to go though all of the journals. Even with Spencer's reading ability it was going to take most of the weekend to go through the nearly 1000 journals. More time would be spent opening the boxes, and starting book after book than the actual reading would.

Forty of the boxes were accounting records. There were three full sets of records also from 1989. There were fifteen boxes of computer-generated ledgers that showed very low gross income and high expenses. These were determined to be the books used for tax purposes. Another fifteen boxes were also computer-generated ledgers with a much higher gross income reported with fewer expenses. This was the set of books Mr. Jackson had allegedly used to show high returns for future investors. The last 10 boxes were handwritten ledgers. These books represented from the year 2000 through June 2008 when the books were confiscated. The theory was these were the actual corporation books and would show a true financial history of the company.

Hotch told the group, "The government has been trying to get this guy on money laundering, embezzlement, tax fraud, investor fraud, insider trading, racketeering, and even blackmail, but right now they are focusing on the tax fraud and insider trading. They believe they have enough evidence to sentence him for 80 years. The trial was originally set to take place in New York, but too many of the victims live in the city and the defense successfully argued that the jury pool in New York would be tainted. You all may have read about this back in January. The judge agreed and the trial was transferred to DC and was postponed until now."

Hotch saw everyone nodding and he continued, "When looking through all of this evidence if we think we can prove any of the other charges, great, but we are concentrating on the financial violations first. Something the government learned back with the Al Capone case. Better to put them away on something you can prove then let them walk on a larger crime you are sure they committed, but don't have enough evidence to get a conviction."

Reid started to elaborate on Hotch's words. "Tax fraud has been a way to put people away since Frank J. Wilson, the man who spearheaded the campaign to convict Alphonse "Scarface" Capone of tax evasion in 1931…"

Morgan stopped him. "We know, we know, we all saw The Untouchables."

Reid continued, "Actually the movie wasn't accurate in the financial aspects…" he trailed off when he saw all of them staring at him. "OK, too much information, we just need to get started going through all of this."

Morgan groaned as he started to look through one of the boxes on the table. "How are we ever going to get through all of this Hotch?"

"We will just split it up, and do the best we can over the next 4 days. I don't suspect we will get a lot of sleep. Rossi, Prentiss and JJ, you start with the financial ledgers. There are 3 sets of books for 20 years each of the computer generated copies and less than 10 years of the hand written journals. Get together and see if you can make heads or tails of that mess."

Looking at Garcia he said "Help Reid get the journals out of the boxes and in order for him to read. Having them laid out for him should help him get through them faster. After you have him set up, you can start doing some background checks on everyone that has come in contact with this evidence. If there has been some tampering, we need to find out where.

He continued, "Morgan that leaves you and me to sort through the other evidence. Let's all take a break to get something to eat and meet back here at 6:00, it's going to be a long night."

Spencer approached Hotch, "Can I talk to you, in private?"

Hotch nodded and Spencer followed him to his office. "What's up?"

Spencer looked hesitant, but Hotch patiently waited for him to talk. "I know someone that can help us with all of this work." Spencer paused, "I know there are ways you can have an outside person help immediately without going through all of the proper channels and budgetary discussions."

"Yes?" He said, waiting for Spencer to continue.

"You know I've made friends with my sponsor, Bob and some of his friends." Hotch nodded so he continued, "What I haven't told you is I've been seeing, ahh… dating his granddaughter, Chelsea. We have been seeing each other since we came back from South Carolina on New Years."

"And?" Hotch had lots of paperwork to look through and wanted Reid to get to the point. Reid continued, "Chelsea is a self-employed Certified Forensic Accountant and has done some work for the Bureau. There are regulations that allow you to bring in outside help on a case without asking for Straus' approval if the person has proper clearance and it does not affect the funding. I know that is written to be used to bring someone from another department in to help, like we have used Kevin Lynch, but it could be used for this also. I'm sure she would be willing to volunteer her time so there would be no funding issues."

Reid wanted him to see it for himself, and told him to check her out. Hotch did what Reid asked and started to type into his laptop. "She is in the system. Her name is Chelsea Lozano." Reid also gave him her address, driver's license number and social security number.

He looked up at Reid, "Is she aware that you know all of that information?"

"Yes, well I'm sure she knows…" pausing, "she knows all about me, including my eidetic memory. She knows I've seen her file so I'm sure she knows I remember everything in it. It didn't seem to bother her." He stopped and stared at Hotch. "Should that bother her? I know all of the team's info including their badge numbers, does that bother you?"

Hotch laughed at Reid's serious question. "No it doesn't bother me, and I'm sure it doesn't bother anyone else on the team. We all know of your talent's we just don't think about it. She probably feels the same; you told me she knows everything." He paused, "How much is everything? Never mind, we need to get to work on this."

After a few minutes on his laptop, he said, "Everything does seem in order. She has a high enough clearance for this and she has gone to trial as an expert witness on two FBI cases. If she did need to go as a witness, no one could question it. You are right, the way the regulation is written, if she receives no payment it would be officially permitted. We really could use the help, are you sure she would be willing to do this as a volunteer? Also," pausing again and looking straight at Reid "are you sure this is the way you want to introduce her to the team?"

Spencer nodded, "Yes, I'm sure. She would love to help put Randall Jackson away. She just finished working on the Abbot & Carson Brokerage case. I'm sure you saw that in the news."

Hotch nodded, "Is that why you were running backgrounds on James Walker and Carlos Martinez?"

"You knew about that?" Spencer was genuinely surprised.

"There isn't much around here that I don't find out about." Hotch stifled a laugh at Spencer's amazed expression. "I only follow up or ask questions if I think it's going to come back to hurt the Bureau or our team. It looks like those two will be going away for awhile."

He continued, "Give her a call and see if she can help tonight. I'm sure she will need to work tomorrow, but if she does agree, we really would need her to commit to the whole weekend. Having someone look over part of the information and then leave would not help our case. There is also the chance by becoming involved in this; she may have to go to the trial. If it does get that far, the bureau will pay for all of her expenses of course. I can also see if I can get her compensation for her weekend work, but with all of the budget cuts, I can't promise anything."

Spencer went down to the FBI's courtyard and called Chelsea. She was excited to help on the case and meet his team. As he suspected, she was not worried about compensation. She was finishing up on a current case and needed to email the final report by noon tomorrow. She told him she had a little over an hour's worth of work and when she finished it, she would be available to help tonight, all day tomorrow, and the weekend.

Spencer came back to Hotch and told her she had agreed to help. "I know you wanted everyone back here 6:00, but she had some work to do. I can stop and bring her some dinner and we can be back here by 6:30 or 6:45. If she finishes the case she is working on tonight, she will be free all day tomorrow as well as the weekend."

Hotch agreed. "Do you want me to tell the team about her before you arrive?"

Spencer nodded, "Yes that will make the introductions easier."

#

At 6:30 Spencer and Chelsea walked towards the conference room. Everyone was already there looking through some of the boxes. The closer they got to the room, the tighter she squeezed his hand. Just before they walked into the room he whispered, "They are going to love you. Trust me."

As they walked in everyone was quiet and all eyes were on Chelsea. Spencer could feel the tension coming from her body. He moved so his arm was protectively around her waist and led her into the room.

Everyone was now standing up around the table as Spencer started to introduce them. First to Spencer's left was Morgan. "Chelsea Lozano, this is Derek Morgan"

Chelsea said, "Hi, I've heard a lot about you, it sounds like you two have been through a lot together."

"Nice to meet you," Turning to Spencer with a smirk, he continued, "WE haven't heard anything about you."

Chelsea just smiled at Morgan as Spencer ignored him and introduced her to JJ.

She turned her attention to JJ and said "Nice to meet you. You have a beautiful family." At JJ's confused expression she continued, "Spencer has a framed photo of Will, Henry and you in his apartment, I think it was at the Baptism. He also carries a recent photo of Henry in his wallet. He is really adorable." JJ smiled and said thank you.

Next Spencer introduced Garcia. "Spencer has told me how great you are on the computer. I bet you already know a lot about me since Agent Hotchner told you I was going to be here." Garcia started to blush and Chelsea said, "I don't mind at all. I'd be happy to give you my passwords to my social networking sites if you would like to check them out." She paused and smiled. "I'm sure you could do it without the passwords, but having permission is always better."

Garcia smiled and turned to Spencer, "I like her already."

Rossi was next around the table, but before Spencer could introduce her, Chelsea said, "Agent Rossi. I've read most of your books. I read your second one with my grandpa when I was 16. He was very excited to show it to me. A couple of the chapters were devoted to cases where police departments had shown some early use of victimology before it was widely used. One of the cases you mentioned was my grandfather's while he was a NYPD detective. He told me that many of the other detectives would think that he and his partner were nuts trying to find out background information on the victim, but my grandpa said they had much more info to go on when they did. People in the department called it voodoo detective work, but they closed more cases than most because of it."

Rossi said, "That's great. I'd love to sit down and talk to both you and your grandfather some time. It seems you know a lot more about us the we do about you."

Agent Hotchner introduced himself and thanked Chelsea for her willingness to help with this case. "As you can see from the boxes, we have a lot of work ahead of us. And please, call me Hotch."

"I'm glad I'm able to help. I didn't take on very many cases recently because I was so involved with the Abbot & Carson Brokerage Case. Now I have some available time."

The last person around the table and directly to Chelsea's right was Emily Prentiss. As Spencer introduced her Chelsea looked a little shocked and asked, "Are you related to Ambassador Prentiss?"

Now it was Prentiss' turn to look shocked. Everyone in the room was staring at them, even Spencer. "You know my mother?"

"No, I don't really know her. I have attended a lot of guest lecturer events with my mother and a few professor friends of hers at Georgetown University. They have different guest speakers every semester and Ambassador Prentiss" she corrected herself, "your mother, was a speaker one time about 6 or 7 years ago. Spencer has said your name before, but I never made the connection. You look a lot like her. She is a beautiful lady."

Prentiss was rarely speechless and managed to say, "Thank you. I never knew my mother was a speaker at Georgetown. It's very nice to meet you." Prentiss looked like she was about to continue when Hotch suggested they get to work.

Hotch pointed out all of the financial records to Chelsea. After she took several minutes to look at all of the boxes, she said, "With a company trying to fraud clients, three sets of books are not that uncommon. When they are trying to scam investors, they have one set of records overstating the gross revenues to encourage people to hand over their money. Expenses may also be underreported on these books. A second set of records will show all of the gross revenues that can be tied to them directly. This set of books is used to file a tax return. They will give this set to a legitimate accounting company and everything looks legit. Every expense will be listed here to get the largest deduction possible. They may even add a little revenue from cash transactions or other sources that the IRS would not know about to help prove they are not doing anything illegal."

"Then there are the real books. They are just for personal record keeping. The actual revenue is usually somewhere between the other two sets of ledgers. Expenses tend to be the same as the IRS version also, but some expenses that cannot legitimately be explained may only be listed here."

After a few minutes, Chelsea continued, "I'm surprised that all three sets of books are present."

JJ asked, "Is that unusual?"

"Yes, usually when a suspect knows that they are going to be caught, they will try to destroy all versions of the ledgers, but especially the real books. It usually will include names, times and dates that can be very incriminating. A few criminals are so arrogant that they think they never will get caught and keep them, but most burn or shred them out of desperation. If the real books are on a hard drive somewhere, even if they have been destroyed, many times they can be retrieved. I've never worked on a case where a hand written set of books were still complete."

"That could make my job easier," Chelsea continued. "When the real version has not been found, I've been asked to reconstruct a picture of their financial history by combining the other two sets, but it never is as accurate as the real thing and nearly worthless for a trial. It usually is used as a tool to get an idea what type of evidence is still unaccounted for."

Hotch and Morgan helped Reid and Chelsea move all of the ledgers into a small seldom-used conference room with a round table. The journals that Reid was going to look through had already been moved there earlier. "Chelsea, do you need anything else?" Hotch asked. "I assumed that it would be easier to look over all of these figures without the distraction of 5 people searching through and moving boxes."

"Thank you sir, it looks like I have everything and I know where to look if I need some additional information." Smiling she continued, "And thank you for this room, I will get this done quicker in here. I'm used to Spencer's reading so that won't distract me."

Hotch and Morgan excused themselves and Chelsea and Spencer started to work.


	6. Chapter 6

At 3:30 am Chelsea turned to Spencer and told him she needed to shut her eyes for a half an hour. Spencer nodded and arranged with Morgan to use the couch in his office to rest for a couple of hours. Spencer sat at one end with Chelsea lying across the couch with her head in his lap.

Rossi walked by Morgan's office at 5:30 and smiled as he saw the two sleeping on the couch, just as Hotch walked up. "How long have you known?" Rossi asked Hotch.

"I knew something was up in mid February, but I was sure he was in a relationship when we went to Boston for the Reaper. You?"

"About the same. I spent a lot of time with him in March when we were helping Prentiss look into the death of her friend. He was on the phone more than usual and one of the cops at a crime scene started to say something and he stopped him and they talked in private for a couple of minutes. I didn't say anything. I figured he'd talk when he was ready." He looked at the couple on the couch and said, "They look good together."

Hotch smiled and nodded and as they headed towards the break room for some coffee he said, "I'm glad he brought her in. Not only did we all get to meet her, we can definitely use the help."

At 6:00 am both Chelsea and Prentiss walked into the break room to get coffee. Chelsea still had on the light pink sweat pants and pink Converse she had on the night before, but she was now wearing one of Spencer's white dress shirts from his go bag. She had the sleeves rolled up and it tied at the waist.

Prentiss smiled, "Reid should have suggested you pack a bag yourself."

Chelsea laughed, "You like my new fashion statement? I didn't even think about needing a bag. I'm glad Spencer had an extra shirt with him. I have worked overnight before, but since I usually work in my home office changes of clothes are not a problem." Noticing that Emily changed from the red shirt she wore yesterday to a similar blue one. "Hopefully I'll get a chance to go home today, get a shower, and pack some things to work the weekend."

Prentiss nodded and offered her a protein bar. "I always keep a few of these in my desk and my purse incase it's a long night. This and a couple cups of coffee keep me going for a long time."

Chelsea took and bar and thanked her. Prentiss continued, "I'm glad Reid decided to ask Hotch for your help. I've been wondering if there was someone special in his life, he's been different lately," she corrected herself "in a good way. More comfortable or something. I think you guys must have had a good Valentine's Day weekend."

Chelsea blushed a little, "What makes you say that?"

"I knew it!" she laughed, Chelsea's blush proved she was right. "I caught him smiling all day that following Monday. I knew something was up! I didn't question him, I just watched him all day. Later that day, he told us about your grandpa. He had not given us any details about him until that day. But I still knew something else was going on. Call it women's intuition."

Chelsea was shaking her head as she followed Prentiss into the conference room. Hotch followed them in and everyone else was already waiting. Hotch started the conversation by asking if anyone had found anything interesting.

Chelsea was shy but asked, "Where did you get all of these ledgers from? Did you say they were all from your NY office?"

Hotch nodded yes, "Why?"

Chelsea hesitated but said, "Did anyone else feel that the evidence was fake?"

Hotch looked around and asked Chelsea to elaborate.

"I mentioned last night about why there are sometimes three sets of books. In a trial, the two sets that are used for the IRS and the investors are mentioned, but the real set is what is used to incriminate the suspect or suspects."

Chelsea took a breath and continued; "I looked over all three sets of books for the first 5 years that overlapped 2000 through 2005. The books that represent their taxable income match their tax returns filed with the IRS that Garcia obtained for me. I believe these are the actual set of books they sent to a CPA to do their returns. The investor set of records also looks real. Based on the defendants' depositions that Morgan showed me, the numbers in these records seem to match the defrauded investor's stories. Those books were all computer generated and were easily to quickly look through and compare"

Hotch saw she started to get uncomfortable and said, "Go on. The last set of books don't seem accurate to you?"

She nodded. "No, I believe they are fakes. I spent most of my time looking at this set. It took some real studying and they are close, but some of the numbers just don't add up. At first I thought that whoever wrote these just made a few errors and because it was hand written they didn't figure it out. But the errors continue through all five years that I looked at and some of the info that was left out would have been more incriminating. They also seemed too random."

Hotch interrupted "Too random?"

"It's hard to really describe, but when people try to fake financial records, they don't want to appear like there is any pattern so many times they purposely go too far in making it seem random. Just like the probabilities of getting a 6 when you roll a die, every time you have the same chance to get a 6 and you may actually get a 6 many times in a row. No matter what the last roll was, the probability of the next roll doesn't change. The same thing happens in financial records. You usually will see many $100 or $1,000 payments on the same page because it is an often-used bill amount. Many times even in change amounts, you will get the exact occasionally.'

She paused and looked at JJ, "You know when you balance your bank statement and you will see one debit for $4.62 then the next for $14.62. That is a random occurrence. During the 5 years I looked at, there was never more than one $100 payment on each page and never was there the same exact of change." JJ nodded and Chelsea continued. "All of these details don't add up to a real portrayal of a businesses financial history."

She looked at Reid "If I had to guess, this set of books was put together over a month, maybe two. They probably used the real set to make this fake and maybe that's why they only go back to 2000. If they had more time, they probably would have made less errors and forged the books back to 1989 to match the other 2 sets." Looking back at the group, "This is the set of books that the jury will use to decide if they were intentionally trying to defraud the defendants or if it was a bad investment that they bought into."

Looking at Hotch, "That's why I asked where this all came from. I don't know if they never found the real set of ledgers or if it the real set was switched out for this later. Either way this could be used to confuse the issue and have a mistrial. There is no way a Forensic Accountant could not see this in a few hours. I took more time looking through it than I normally would have because you told me this came from the FBI and I hated to accuse anyone from the bureau. But anyone with an accounting background could have figured this in less than a week."

Spencer then spoke up. "All of these ledgers I'm going through have nothing to do with the information on the trial so far. It is a lot of odd ramblings about Mr. Seymour's childhood. There are almost 100 journals for every year and I've gone through almost 7 years so far. I don't know if they are fakes, but they are not relevant. The journals are just ramblings of accounts of bravery, and other unrelated acts of good deeds. We've seen irrelevant things contain very important information before so I have been pushing on without saying anything, but if Chelsea is correct, then maybe this is not real either. Why would anyone send all of this information to us? How could this help?"

The answer to the question dawned on both Chelsea and Spencer and they spoke at the same time looking at each other. "To keep you busy." "To keep me busy."

Almost everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. Rossi spoke first. "Hotch, who would know that Reid would be going through all of the general ledgers and want him to not look at them?"

"I don't know, but I plan to find out." Hotch had a determined look on his face.

Garcia then asked, "What are you guys talking about. I don't understand what Reid has to do with this case?"

Morgan started to explain. "What would you do to keep Reid from looking at a very important piece of evidence," Morgan stopped and smiled at Garcia, "assuming you were a bad guy for a minute."

Garcia still looked confused, "I guess I'd want to keep him busy and out of the office."

JJ finished filling in Garcia. "Or keep him busy looking at something ELSE. Anyone that knows this team would know that if there were 20 boxes of small handwritten journals in evidence that needed to be reviewed in less than 4 days, Reid would be the one to go over them."

Garcia now understood. "They thought that if he was busy all weekend reading the journals, the ledgers would be split up among a few of you and you wouldn't notice the fake documents in time for the trial!"

Spencer smiled at Chelsea. "They didn't know I had my own Forensic Account to help on the case."

Morgan teased him, "Of course they didn't, neither did we!"

"If these books took a month or more to forge, someone was pretty sure a while ago that this unit would be the group to look over all of this." Rossi pointed out looking at all of the boxes.

"The Section Chief in the New York White Collar division went to law school with me and we have kept in touch over the years." Hotch said thoughtfully. "It wouldn't be a stretch to think that he would think of me. Plus with our team's track record of solving out of the normal type cases, it would make sense." Hotch paused thinking. "But, the rumors of evidence tampering only came up within the last 2 weeks. It almost seems that the rumors were started to INSURE the evidence was moved before the trial."

This time it was Morgan that asked the question they were all thinking. "Why would the defense attorneys or even Jackson himself want a mistrial? Even if they did succeed, there is no way that the DC prosecutors would just let it drop. They would be filing for a new trial right away."

"Mr. Jackson has been held without bail because he was considered a flight risk. But the judge made it very clear that the trial needed to start quickly because he believed holding Mr. Jackson due to delays in the prosecution's case, would be unlawful imprisonment. He did not want any delays that kept anyone from due process. If there was a mistrial, I believe the judge would set bail and Mr. Jackson would be a free man until he was convicted. If he was out on bail, he might go to a country with no extradition treaty."

"If that is the case, Jackson has been planning an escape if he ever got caught for a long time." Rossi was thinking out loud now. "He either had someone working in the NY FBI office or paid someone off. Spreading the rumors of evidence tampering probably wouldn't be that difficult, but pulling of the switch of the journals would take some serious planning."

Hotch said, "Yes. We need find evidence to prove this theory, Now that the third set of books have been admitted into the evidence chain, we will not be able to dismiss them without our own evidence that they are forged. We will also need to discover if the real books were ever found and exchanged for these or if the originals were destroyed before Mr. Jackson was arrested and who in the NY office was protecting him."

He turned towards Chelsea, "Chelsea, could you put in writing all of discrepancies you found in the books. I don't think we can use the random theory for the trial, but if you can give us a list of what you found, I may be able to get the trial postponed a few days if necessary. They finished the jury selection yesterday and the trail is scheduled to start at 1:00 pm on Tuesday. Before then, let's see if we can find out exactly how these books made it into the evidence chain. I'd prefer not to ask for a continuance."

"Of course." Chelsea nodded, "There are a lot more financial records in all of these boxes, are we sure it is real?"

Prentiss pulled out some of the documents she had been going through during the night. "There are some court documents of client complaints and other financial transactions. They all look legit"

JJ mentioned that she had seen some copies of bank statements in one of the boxes she had been going through and she would pull them out also.

Morgan looked at Chelsea, "There are a lot of pieces of financial information from all different sources in many of these boxes. I think it's safe to assume that all of this couldn't have been forged in that short of time. Also, many of these documents are also in computer systems from their original sources, if you feel that anything we give you doesn't look correct, Garcia will probably be able to confirm wither it is real or not."

Chelsea nodded at Morgan and then turned her attention to Hotch. "Hotch, it really took some talent for someone to forge these books. This was not a simple task to make them look real, even for a quick inspection. If someone doesn't understand how to do journal or ledger entries, they wouldn't know how to manipulate these numbers no matter what their incentive was. You are looking for someone with motive, a good grasp of the financial industry, opportunity and access to Mr. Jackson's financials. That should shorten the list of suspects I would think."

Hotch nodded and looked at Spencer, "Reid, for now lets consider the journals you are reading not important and lets get to the bottom of who either switched the evidence or planted it. You, Rossi, JJ, and Prentiss start sorting through all of the boxes and look for anything that could be helpful for Chelsea's report. Garcia do you have that list of everyone that has handled the evidence?" she nodded. "Good. Morgan you and I will go look through that list and see what Garcia came up with."

He looked at Chelsea. "Is there anything else you need?"

Chelsea shook her head. "Not much, I just need to be close to an outlet to plug in my laptop. This report will be easier if I use Excel to keep track of everything."

Hotch pointed to an outlet that popped up in the middle of table and told her to ask anyone if she needed something. Then he said, "OK, it's 7:15 now, lets get to work. We will meet back here at 11:30 and we can discuss what we have found over lunch. I'll have some sandwiches delivered then." Everyone nodded and started their assigned tasks.


	7. Chapter 7

Hotch and Morgan followed Garcia towards her cave while she was telling them that way too many people had touched or moved or worked on all of the evidence. Chelsea could hear her asking them if there was a way to shorten the list of subjects as the moved out of earshot into her office.

Reid helped Chelsea get her laptop set up and plugged in the large conference room. They then asked Rossi, Prentiss, and JJ if they would help them move all of the ledger boxes back from the small room Reid and Chelsea had used last night. This time they decided that working in the same room with all of the other boxes of paperwork and other agents would be an advantage.

After all of the boxes had been returned to the main conference room, Rossi, Prentiss and JJ started shuffling the other boxes around to split them up between them all. Reid helped Chelsea open the ledgers she needed first and get her notes set up. When they were set up, he asked her if she wanted to get a cup of coffee before she started.

He took her hand as they walked to the break room. He realized that he liked touching her, even here at the office and that surprised him. He turned to her as she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. "I'm proud of you. That had to be hard to tell Hotch, knowing that someone in the Bureau tampered with evidence." He started to pour his own coffee as she responded.

"I spent more time than I should have looking at it, but I needed to be VERY sure before I would say something like that. It's hard to believe that someone that took the time and effort to get a job at the FBI and had a security clearance would do something like this."

He nodded, "People do odd things for a lot of different reasons, but I'm sure we'll catch whoever did it."

"It is kind of scary if we are correct that they knew you would be looking at this evidence. Kind of feels like someone is watching us."

"I think right now the only people watching us are JJ and Prentiss." He laughed as he saw them hanging back and watching them holding their coffee cups. "You guys can come in here and get your coffee. We are only taking about the case."

If JJ and Prentiss were at all embarrassed at being caught spying, they didn't show it. "We were just giving you some privacy" JJ explained to Chelsea as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

Spencer shook his head. "Not much privacy when you're staring at us from only 10 feet away." Prentiss had just turned her back to Spencer to fill her cup and had a huge smile on her face.

Chelsea couldn't help but laugh. "All right everyone, lets get back to the conference room and get to work. If we get this case solved soon, I really will get some privacy with Spence when I take him home." Prentiss couldn't help herself any longer and bust out laughing. Then noticing the dirty look that Spencer gave her, she laughed even harder. She put her arm around Chelsea's shoulder and led her back to the conference room as JJ followed close behind smiling with Spencer hanging back still shaking his head. Rossi was watching as the four came back in the room. Prentiss started to tell him something and he put up his hand, "I don't even want to know." But Spencer noticed that even he had a smile on his face.

Spencer's head was spinning. Chelsea had just made him blush at work, called him Spence for the first time, and seemed to be getting along very well, maybe too well, with Prentiss, all in less than 24 hours of meeting the team. He was thankful to have the work to distract them all.

Mostly they all worked quietly looking for anything that could help piece together the real financial history of Mr. Jackson and the Action Brokerage. Occasionally someone would find something they thought might be useful or Chelsea asked them to specifically look for some documents, but mostly all that was heard was shuffling of paper and clicking computer keys. The only other movement was just before 11:00 someone came in and took sandwich orders. They promised to be back at 11:30 with lunch.

With the 2 real sets of books and bank statements from 3 different banks Chelsea was able to piece together a fairly complete account of 2000 – 2003. When they met for lunch, Hotch started by asking Chelsea if she had learned anything new.

Morgan and JJ passed out the sandwiches and drinks as Chelsea began. "I started in 2000 again because that is the year I already had some notes on." Hotch nodded for her to continue. "I made a month by month list of the income and expenditures from the 2 sets of books first. Looking at the IRS version, that tells me almost all ligament income and expenditures and is a great starting point. Everything that is not listed on that statement is not legal. That could be as simple as under the table payments, minimum wage violation, even tax evasion or embezzlement. I think once I have most of the data together, it will give you a better idea of where to find the proof of illegal behavior."

"I have tons of bank statements and with everyone's help I was able to find the 2000 through the 2008 records from 3 different banks. The credits and debits of the 2 local banks align with the 2000 through 2003 IRS and or investors books. Just in the last half hour, JJ found the records from a third bank. I'm still working on the first year, but it looks like all of the activity for The Action Brokerage account at the Golden West Bank in Las Vegas, is not reported anywhere. There are not a lot of transactions, but they are all large amounts and it looks like about $300,000 per month is sent out of the US. I can't tell from the statements if it is another business or an off-shore type account."

"Maybe Garcia will have some luck tracking the transactions." Chelsea handed a small stack of paperwork to Hotch. "Here are the statements for the first 10 months of 2000. It should take me less than an hour to enter the rest of 2000 though 2003 now that I see the pattern. These transactions could be what they were hoping you wouldn't find or more planted evidence to keep you jumping through hoops. Although, Spencer looked that the statements carefully and if they are fakes, they are very good. I'm assuming they are real and were buried in a box of paperwork. Whomever set up the fake books probably didn't realize these statements were here."

Looking around the room, Chelsea continued, "I've really just started putting everything together, everyone in here has found some interesting financial documents over many different years, but I need to finish my base financial setup before I can figure out where all of that comes into play." Once Hotch had looked over the Golden West bank statements, he passed them over to Garcia. Chelsea popped open her can of Coke and unwrapped her sandwich signifying she had told them everything new she had learned in the last 4 hours.

Hotch went next, first thanking Chelsea for her work and then telling them what he and Morgan had found with Garcia's help. "Garcia dug around the NY computer system and found some deleted pdf files that contained all of the documents that were signed into evidence. It also detailed what files were sent to the DC prosecutor's office back in January when the trial was transferred to the DC courthouse. Many of the financial statements stayed at the FBI office while they continued to put together the paper trail for the trial."

JJ asked "Don't they usually keep the evidence all together?"

Hotch nodded. "Yes, normally. But nothing about this case seems normal. At the time the FBI White Collar accounting department was still going through all of the financial records and prosecutors were willing to wait for that report. The NY prosecutor's office had looked through the evidence, but it was so detailed they wanted professional forensic accountants to make the reports for trial and they left it with the NY Bureau. When the trial was transferred to DC, the DC prosecutor's decided to not start over with the paperwork since they were short on time and let the NY FAs continue working on the financial reports. They asked for all of the other evidence to be sent to their offices to DC. It included witness reports, all SEC complaints, some recorded and video evidence."

"No reports of evidence tampering had surfaced yet. They intended to have the FBI send the evidence logged into the trial directly from NY and call them as witnesses so they didn't ask for it to be transferred to their office."

Morgan picked it up from there. "According to the paperwork that Garcia found, the original financial documents did not include any personal writing journals or hand written financial general journals. It looks like the evidence the both Chelsea and Reid were reviewing was slipped into the mix during the interoffice transfer. The number of boxes that left NY coincides with the number of boxes received here in Quantico, so there was no reason to expect foul play on our end. If Randal Jackson were to get his way, there would be a mistrial because of this mess next week."

Reid stepped in thinking about that they had talked about last night. "Now that we know there have been multiple money transfers out of the country, it does give more credibility to our theory that Mr. Jackson wants a mistrial. The NY judge was clear that he did not want Mr. Jackson held without bail for what he called 'an unreasonable long period of time before the trial'' There is far too much evidence to ever acquit Mr. Jackson and he would be facing most of his life in prison. But if he were able to post bail and flee the country it sounds like he would be financially set from off shore accounts from the evidence we have found."

Hotch nodded, "All he would need to do is travel to a country with no extradition treaty with the US and he could live easily on what he has."

No one had anything else to add except that they were finding lots of financial paper trails and compiling them by year to help Chelsea.

While they were eating lunch, they all discussed the why's, when's and how's the records could have been exchanged in the NY accounting department, but did not have any solid leads in that area yet. When they finished and were getting back to work, Hotch asked everyone to be meet back in the conference room again at 6:30pm.

At 6:00 he came into the conference room "Chelsea, could I see you for a few minutes in my office before we all get together?" Chelsea nodded and followed him up the stairs to his office.


	8. Chapter 8

Hotch motioned for Chelsea to take a seat in front of his desk as he moved around to sit down. "I first want to thank you again for your help on this case. We wouldn't be as far along as we are without your input."

Chelsea tried to thank him, but he continued, "It does appear that whoever is behind this is aware of Reid's abilities and planned to keep him busy. Although, I do believe he would have finished the journals in time to go through other paperwork or the rest of our agents might have found the discrepancies in the financial records, there is a good chance it would not have been in time to clear it up before the trial. Because of your help, we only spent one night looking in the wrong direction and by finding some leads today, we have all weekend to pull everything together and put Mr. Jackson in the hot seat on Tuesday."

Chelsea relaxed; she didn't realize how nervous she was when Hotch asked her to come to his office. "It was my pleasure sir. I come from a family of law enforcement and if there is any way that I can help get some of the bad guys off the street, I'm in. I like to think I can help make the world a little safer without carrying a gun." She smiled at Hotch's small grin. "Spencer told me you know about the Abbot & Carson Brokerage case and some of the work I've done for the FBI, so you know that I'm not just saying that. I really do want to help."

Hotch nodded, "I talked to Section Chief Strauss and she is putting through the paperwork to get you paid." Chelsea started to protest, "No, we are in a better position because of your help. I knew I'd have to talk to her today about your involvement, but because of what you discovered, she had no choice but to agree with my decision to bring you in. Strauss has high ambitions for herself and one of her main objectives is making herself and the Bureau look good. When I told her that if Mr. Jackson had succeeded in his plan it would have cast a huge shadow on the BAU and the FBI she had no way of declining my request for your compensation." Hotch didn't mention that Strauss did make it clear that she didn't like him doing this behind her back and that he was lucky it worked out. She took every opportunity she could to try and put Hotch down a notch, even when things worked in her favor.

"I also wanted to tell you that I plan to take Reid with me to the prosecutor's office in DC in the morning. I have an appointment with him at 8:00am. He has allowed me to look at all of his paperwork on the trial, but not take any of it with me. I will tell him tomorrow everything we found, but right now all of the rumors about the FBI mishandling evidence is enough to not want it out of his sight. Reid's reading speed and retention, will be a huge help. Plus he has looked at a lot of the evidence we have in the conference room and he may find some discrepancies in what the prosecutor has to work with."

"I'm planning on sending everyone home after our meeting to get some rest and meet again here early in the morning. Will you be OK to work here tomorrow with the rest of the team while Reid and I are in DC?"

"Of course Hotch, what ever you need me to do is fine." Chelsea replied enthusiastically, "I'm just happy to go home and take a shower and get some clean clothes, although a good night's sleep will be nice. Then I'm yours for the rest of the weekend."

Hotch apologized that he didn't think to have Reid suggest a change of clothes. Chelsea laughed and said, "It's fine, but I am wondering what everyone that works here thought about Spencer bringing his girlfriend here and seeing me running around in pink sweat pants and one of his shirts during a normal workday."

"Most of the staff on this floor are used to our odd hours and probably didn't pay much attention. Although, I did catch a few gossipy types in the break room wondering if you were really his girlfriend. I knew the guys and they never have liked that Reid was able to start at such a young age in the BAU. Most of them have applied to our unit at least once over the last 5 years. They are not very pleasant types, mentioning that he was too much of a nerd for someone so cute. Or that he was way to shy to have landed you. I decided to butt in and tell them to back off, and that yes, you are his girlfriend. I'm sure there won't be any more gossip now." He said, standing up and ushering her through the door. "Don't worry about anyone here. The people that matter, see Reid as family and are happy you two found each other."

Chelsea said thanks as they headed towards the group gathered in the conference room. When they were all gathered together, Hotch detailed what he and Morgan had found with Garcia's help. "Over 80 people had access to the evidence at the New York Bureau during the past 6 months, but that number drops to 30 in the last 4 months since the trial was transferred to DC and Mr. Jackson was detained in prison. We looked at all of their financial history and only one person had any suspicious bank activity. One shipping department employee has been receiving $1,000 deposits weekly for nearly 4 months at The Golden West Bank in Las Vegas."

Chelsea was surprised to hear that bank name and blurted out "That's the same bank we found the off-shore money transfers for Mr. Jackson."

Hotch nodded and continued, "Yes, and this employee," pausing looking down at his notes, "Thomas Mathers, has not been back at work since Wednesday after lunch. He was the person that prepared the entire shipment to be sent here to us. It doesn't tell us who added the extra boxes of fake evidence, but we now have a great place go start looking. We tried his home and cell phone, but his cell is turned off and there is no answer at his home. He is 28 years old, not married, lives alone and has no family on the East coast. I dispatched a patrol car to check out his apartment, but no one was there and I doubt he will be back there."

JJ then asked, "Is that enough to prove that the books should not be submitted as evidence?"

"It could be," Hotch said shaking his head, "but it also might just be enough for the defense to ask for a mistrial claiming that all of the evidence could be fake. We need to know who forged these books and get some proof that it started with Mr. Jackson or one of his associates."

Rossi added, "At least it's just Friday and we still have all weekend and Monday to figure this out before the trial on Tuesday."

Morgan's cell vibrated "In the search that Garcia did, we also found an accountant in the NY office that called in sick on Thursday and is still out today. Hotch, I just got a text from the cops at his house, he is there telling them he is sick and won't answer any questions or let them come in without a warrant."

Hotch filled the team in on Rual Sanchez, a 48 year old Forensic Accountant that has worked for the bureau for 20 years. Not only did he call in sick for the last 2 days, he wasn't seen after lunch on Wednesday just like Thomas Mathers, but his wife and 2 kids have all been out sick since Wednesday.

"I don't like the sound of that." Rossi was thinking out loud. "If all of his family is really home sick, why would he refuse to allow entry to the cops or answer any of their questions?"

"I agree" Hotch stated. "Unless anyone else found anything the need to share now," he paused looking around, "lets go home and get some rest and start fresh in the morning. We are all working on very little sleep and this financial stuff needs our full attention and rested eyes. Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss all three of you head straight to the jet first thing and go up to New York. We should have a warrant by then, and hopefully you can get Mr. Sanchez to shed some light on his actions. Maybe you will also find a clue to where Mr. Mathers has been for the last few days. Everyone else lets meet here at 7:00am. Reid, you and I will be going to the DC Prosecutor's office at 8:00. He has allowed me to look over all of the other evidence, but understandably, will not let us take any of it with us."

As Reid nodded towards Hotch, everyone started packing up their belongings. Emily came over to Chelsea. "I'm really glad Reid brought you in to help with this mess. It's not a fun way to meet us all, but we are all glad to meet you and your experience is a huge help with this," Looking over she saw Reid listening and continued, "I'm starving, maybe a few of us can go grab some food together?"

Reid nodded again looking at both Prentiss and Chelsea. "Sure, is that OK with you Chelsea?" already knowing the answer would be yes.

"Yes, that sounds great, I'm hungry also and it will be nice to get to know you better." Nodding towards Emily.


	9. Chapter 9

At 8:00am Saturday morning, Chelsea, with the help of JJ, was pulling together the financial picture of The Action Brokerage, Hotch and Reid were facing 100 boxes of evidence at the Prosecutor's office, Prentice was at the NY Bureau looking into how Thomas Mathers could have added the extra boxes to the shipments without raising any red flags, and Rossi and Morgan had just arrived at the home of Rual Sanchez with a warrant to search the premises.

Before Hotch had left the BAU office that morning, he asked Garcia to compile a list of all of Randall Jackson's associates and all visitors or calls he has had since he was held in prison. Any financial records she could pull from that list of people would be helpful also.

Rossi called Hotch at 9:30 with an update of the Sanchez residence search. They arrange a conference call so everyone could be kept up to date.

Hotch started "Rossi, tell everyone what you just told me."

Rossi started the update. "Unfortunately, what we were all thinking last night about Sanchez' family was correct. When he came home Tuesday night from work, there was an armed man in his house. He told him to check his computer. They had emailed him a video of his wife, 10 year old son Brandon, and 8 year old daughter Maria, all bound and gagged. He was told to call his wife's work and kids' school in the morning and let them know they had the flu and wouldn't be out sick for a few days. He was told not to go to the police or tell anyone he works with about this if he wanted to see his family again. They told him to go to work in the morning and wait for instructions. If he did everything he was told, his family would be returned unarmed after the trial started."

Morgan continued the briefing, "As you know, Sanchez is a Bureau Forensic Accountant and he was the lead investigator on all of the financial records for trial. He had heard the rumors of evidence tampering, but was sure they were wrong because it was all locked up and he had control of who was able to see it. Because of the rumors, he was the only one that had complete access to the evidence. Everyone else needed his approval to look anything over. When he arrived at work Wednesday morning, Thomas Mathers was in his office. He had never met him before and didn't even know that he worked there until that morning. All of the evidence was scheduled to be shipped to us that morning and Sanchez already had most of it packed up. As we suspected there were no personal journals from Mr. Jackson, it was a ruse to keep Reid busy. Also, Sanchez said the same thing as Chelsea suspected, the third set of personal financial ledgers were never found. All of that evidence was planted to throw off the Prosecutor's case."

Prentiss picked it up from there. "I don't know where Mathers is now, but I did find out how he was able to get the extra fake journals and ledgers shipped out. I was working with the manager of the shipping department and he told me how the evidence chain works. Sanchez would bring all of the boxes on a pallet to shipping and a clerk would call for a count. According to the records Lynda Martinez accepted the shipment when Snachez brought it in. She called for a shipping rep to do an official package count and guess who was available to help?"

Reid stepped in, "Mathers. But even if he added the extra 40 boxes to the official count, how did he get them into the shipping department? Someone would have noticed him walking in with 40 boxes."

"Glad you asked," you could hear the smile in her voice. "I asked myself the same thing. I did some hunting and found that every morning for the last 3 and a half months when he came to work he carried about 10 - 15 journal books in his brief case. You can see them in the security footage each morning. Nobody checks out personal books of employees, they just do a basic weapon or other illegal substance check. No one opens your bags on the way out so my best guess is everyday he brought in the books, left them hiding somewhere in the shipping department each day until he had them all ready to box up send to us."

JJ was the next to speak up. "That explains all of the $1,000 deposits in the Las Vegas bank we found in Mathers' name. He's been paid off for his work for months now. How did the NY office not catch that? The bank statements were in the boxes we received."

Rossi stepped up again. "I can explain that. Sanchez told us that not only was he to sign off on the shipment being larger than it was when he brought it down that day, he also had to either alter or shred all of his reports. That also explains why we did not receive a full written report from the NY office with the evidence. Mathers stayed and watched until all of it was finished. Sanchez saw the $1,000 bank account records but was never able to find out what the money was for. Somehow when he researched it, there was no person on record for that social security number. The unusual transactions had been in his original report, but he didn't remember the name on the account or make the connection until we talked about it today. Mathers gave Sanchez instructions on the extra evidence that needed to be recorded. After that all of the prior computer files were deleted. Garcia, I think these are some of the files you were able to recover yesterday."

Rossi continued, "He did have a backup file on a data stick that Mathers didn't know about. Typically all files are backed up onto an external hard drive and recorded over each night and Mather's knew that all of the altered documents would be updated that night erasing the correct files. Lucky for us, Sanchez had been having issues with his computer and had backed up everything on a data stick every night that week. He pocketed that drive before he left the office. He said he was keeping it as insurance that his family would be returned. Right now he is refusing to give it to us unless we can save them. He doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize their safety. He's worried that he may be being watched and even our presence at his house may have got them killed. I have told him that if they were watching and saw us here, he would have been contacted by now to encourage him to keep quiet."

Hotch started to make plans for the rest of the day. "OK Rossi and Morgan, get everyone else out of the house and all indication of law enforcement off the street in case they do send someone by to check on him. Prentiss, after you send everything you have found to Garcia, go rent a non-official looking vehicle and meet them at the house. Rossi, does Sanchez still have the video of his family?"

"Yes. We just watched it ourselves. Plus they sent a very short 'proof of life' video last night just to make sure he didn't get cold feet and try and contact us."

Hotch continued, "Good. Garcia, see if you can do anything to help find out where the videos were recorded or sent from. Rossi, does Mr. Sanchez expect any more videos today?"

"He doesn't know. They didn't tell him they were going to send the one last night, but it makes sense for them to make sure he knows they are still alive to keep him in line. They had his 10 year old son read a recent article off of to prove they were alive as of last night, but it was obviously prerecorded and not a live broadcast. I'll call Garcia when we are done and she can log in directly to Sanchez' laptop to see if she can find anything."

"Good, with some luck they will send another video while she is online." Hotch finished giving out the day's assignments. "Rossi, do everything you can to convince him that we need that data stick. With his testimony and the evidence report files we will be able to prove that the evidence is real with the exception of the 40 boxes of journals Mathers planted. Chelsea, keep working on the financial history. If we can't get that data stick it will be all we have, and if we do get the stick, it will be a unbiased confirmation showing the court that the evidence is accurate. That is our best bet to put Mr. Jackson away for a long time."

"JJ, make sure Chelsea has everything she needs and after that help Garcia with the video and start working on the backgrounds of all of Mr. Jackson's associates Garcia researched. We need to find Sanchez' family, finding them is our first priority. Even if whoever has them does plan on releasing them; it would most likely be after a mistrial has been called. Reid and I will continue to go through the boxes here. We might find something in this evidence that can help determine who could have taken them and where they are being held. Hopefully by the time Prentiss gets to the house, there will be leads to follow up on." Hotch ended by asking if anyone else had anything to add and asked everyone to keep him posted on any progress.

Chelsea knew she would not be able to have a complete report over the weekend; the evidence had 2 complete sets of books from 1989. Sanchez and his team had worked on his report for months. But Hotch had told her that if she were able to complete a few years to show that the evidence in the BAU office was in fact the same evidence that the NY office had been looking through and nothing was touched except the fake books and journals that would be enough to prove their case.

#

Hotch and Reid had been going over tons of papers and nothing was jumping out at them. In the early afternoon, on a hunch, Hotch suggested that Reid look over the list of Jackson's associates and his prison visitor list to see if any of the names looked familiar.

Reid contacted Garcia and was asking her to fax everything she found to him, when she screamed. Pulling the phone away from his aching eardrum he asked, "Garcia. Are you alright?"

She replied. "Yes. Yes, I just got excited. I'm logged on to Sanchez' laptop and another email just came in from the kidnappers. Let me call you back." With that she hung up.

Hotch had seen Reid make the call and asked him what had happened. Even he could hear her scream from across the room. Reid explained the situation and said, "I guess there is nothing we can do but wait. We don't want to interrupt her if she can get any information for us."

The 10 minutes that it took Garcia to get back to them seemed like an eternity. When she called back everyone was on the line, even Chelsea. Garcia had called Rossi first. She wanted to conference everyone, but didn't want Sanchez to listen in. Rossi and Prentiss put the call on speakerphone in a room with the door closed and Morgan got his cell and moved across the room so he could keep an eye on Sanchez, but far enough away that he was unable to hear the conversation. She then had texted Chelsea to join her and JJ in her lair and called Reid back. As Reid put the call on speaker, Hotch spoke first. "What did you find Garcia?"

"Well the good news is that they are still all alive. The video this time is the 8 year old daughter reading another online news report from today. I wasn't able to get much off the other videos other than that they were in some type of a bedroom on a corner of a first floor house or apartment. There were not any background sounds I could hear except a few cars. It didn't seem like a busy street."

Reid asked, "How did you know it was a first floor room on a corner, Garcia?"

"I tried to zoom in on anything I could both inside and outside the house. There is a window behind the bed they are sitting on. All of the fabrics of the bedspread and curtains are ordinary. There is nothing custom or special about any of it. I can make out a few trees and the top edge of a stop sign just outside the window." Garcia knew she had answered Reid's question and continued with more information. "JJ researched the tree and it is a London Planetree, unfortunately it is the most common tree in NY so that won't be of any help. I will have to take some time with the new video I just got, but it may be more useful. Because this time the younger daughter was reading, she read much slower than her brother did and the video is 2 minutes longer. Someone told her to hurry up and it scared her and she stopped for at least 10 seconds before she started reading again. I think I heard something in the background, but it will take some time to analyze. When we do apprehend someone, we can use this voice to help convict the guy. I'd like to be the first to slap the sleazebag that scared that little girl."

Chelsea laughed at Garcia's comment and also noticed she had said 'when' not 'if' they catch him, it was comforting to know how much she trusted this team to get the job done. Garcia continued, "The bad news is that this video was taped earlier and it was sent from a different location. Wait…. As we've been talking I've been searching for the IP address. It just popped up. It is a coffee house in Brooklyn that has free WiFi access about 30 minutes from Sanchez' home. I'm sending the address to Morgan's phone now. They are probably long gone, but I'll see if I can find some video security cameras at the shop or in the area."

Hotch took over, "Good work Garcia. Morgan, you and Prentiss go to that shop and see if you can find anyone that can remember anything or if they have any security cameras that are not linked to an outside system. Rossi stay with Sanchez. They may contact him again. Plus, we still don't know if he may try and run off to find his family on his own."

Garcia interrupted Hotch, "There are 4 security cameras on that street. The most useful will probably be the ATM straight across the street. It is a privately owned system in the window of a convenience store so it's going to take some time to locate the owner and get his permission. They are on a private system and I can't easily tap into them without doing some very illegal stuff. There are 2 cameras in the convenience store parking lot, but they are both pointed at the parking lot or front door. That's how I see the ATM. The third camera is a bank ATM next door to the coffee shop. We might be able to get a close up our guys if they walked past, but there are lots of people on the street so it won't be much help unless we have a description from someone inside the coffee shop."

"Hotch" JJ said, "I'll work on getting a warrant for both of the ATMs security feeds and keep you posted. I know you don't want her doing anything that will get us in trouble, " she added with a smile.

He smiled also as he replied, "Thanks, and when you finished with that help Garcia go over every second of that video. We need something to go on. Rossi, hopefully we will have some video footage to show Sanchez soon to see if he recognizes anyone."

Garcia spoke up again, "I didn't forget about you boy wonder, I'll have all of the paperwork you requested faxed to you in a jiffy."

Reid smiled at his nickname and that Garcia remembered his earlier request. "Thanks Garcia. And Chelsea, how is the financial report coming?"

"Everything is going smoothly. I have everything I need, it is just a time consuming project and I need to be accurate. There shouldn't be any problem with having the years 2000 – 2005 that Hotch asked for complete by Monday."

Hotch thanked Chelsea and told everyone what a good job they were doing and everyone went back to work.

Morgan and Prentiss took the Honda Accord she had rented and got to the café as soon as possible. There were not any security cameras in the shop, but they did get an idea of who the guy was that used the WiFi. They called Garcia who patched them through to Rossi, Hotch and Reid.

"No one here can give us a good enough description for a sketch artist," Morgan said, "but a couple people remember a guy coming in wearing jeans, a jean jacket, a Met's hat and carrying a laptop. He didn't stand out, but several people noticed him because he didn't purchase anything. I guess this is a real hangout for locals and they all feel connected to the place and always buy at least a cup of coffee or a muffin before they use the internet. They seemed to take it personally that someone would come in and just use the Internet."

JJ spoke up, "I just received the warrant for the ATM cameras. Maybe a few of the customers would be willing to stay and look at the footage to find the guy."

Morgan started to laugh. JJ asked what was so funny.

You could hear the smile in his voice as he answered, "I think the guy behind the counter would do anything for Prentiss here. He seemed to be very interested in her calling her an "armed beauty." Prentiss moaned making Morgan laugh again.

"He might not appreciate that I am armed if he keeps that up." She said bitterly only making Morgan laugh harder.

"Hotch stepped in saying "OK guys, do whatever you can to get a few people to check over the footage. Will it be available soon Garcia?"

"Yes sir. I'm pulling the footage now. Does 20 minutes sound reasonable? The 10 minutes before the video was sent and 10 after?"

Prentiss spoke up. "Thanks Garcia, that sounds about right. He might stand out if he is still wearing the Met's cap, but we will try and get a positive ID from the customers here also. Hopefully Sanchez will recognize the guy."

"Good work everyone." Hotch concluded the call.

#

The team spent the rest of the day Saturday following leads from the coffee shop customers and the sounds that were heard on the video. Hotch and Reid had looked over everything that the DC prosecutor's office had and everyone went home that night around 9:00pm to get some rest.

Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss stayed at the Sanchez home and got a little sleep in the guest room and couch. They had an early morning conference call with everyone back at the BAU to go over the plans for the day.

Reid had found several connections in the list of Jackson's friends and the evidence he had looked at the day before. Something wasn't sitting right with him, but he couldn't really single out what was bothering him. He was making notes on the white board in deep thought while Chelsea continued her financial report. She couldn't help but stare at him for a while. JJ noticed and smiled, "Interesting to watch him in thought, isn't it?"

Chelsea nodded and continued in the same hushed tone that JJ had used not to disturb him. "I've watched him read before, which is fascinating to me, but I've never seen anything like this. Does he do that often?"

"Yes, his mind goes a million miles a minute and he can see what the rest of us don't notice. We are used to the process, but it is interesting to watch others that see it for the first time." JJ continued, "Sometimes cops will look at him like he's crazy and just write him off, but they are always amazed later. I can't tell you how many times I hear a comment at the end of a case about how they are sorry they underestimated him or ignored him. He's always vindicated in the end and the cops and detectives are sorry, but much of the time we are on a case people treat him like he is an alien."

The comments made Chelsea sad. She had seen how some people looked at him when they were out, but hadn't even thought about how other law enforcement groups would treat him. She knew he was good at his job so she imagined that they would be grateful for his sharp mind and not treat him like an outcast.

JJ saw that Chelsea's expression had changed and told her softly, "He knows he is different and strangers don't always understand, but he is willing to put himself out there for the sake of the victims. By the time he leaves a place, he has won most of them over."

Chelsea was thinking out loud, "I guess, but it still hurts to think of him being ignored. But now I understand why it took my grandpa so long to get him to ask me out. He was probably afraid that I would treat him like that and didn't want to spend an evening stuck in a restaurant with that feeling." She started to smile, "My grandpa probably knew that I would never do that and we would get along. Now I know why he had to trick him into it agreeing to go out with me."

JJ started to ask about what she meant, when Reid said to them, "I think I have something. I need Garcia to check something out," as he ran towards her office.

Hotch, JJ and Chelsea all followed him into Garcia's small room. Garcia looked up and said, "How did you all know I found something?"

"We didn't." Hotch explained, "We were following Reid, he found something he needed your help on. OK, Garcia start first."

Garcia filled them in on what she heard on the video and had finally got a hit on the guy in the Met's cap from the ATM surveillance with facial recognition software. Reid had her check the home ownership and rentals of a few names, one was the Met's cap guy Garcia had just named, that he thought could be the kidnappers from the paperwork he had been going through. With a list of potential homes, the fact that a window faced a corner with a stop sign and the sound of both a subway and a church bell they were able to narrow down where the Sanchez family was being held to one home.

They contacted Rossi with the information. He, Morgan and Prentiss coordinated a team from the NY Bureau and SWAT to raid the home. They were able to arrest 3 subjects and get the family out safely.

The Kidnappers lawyered up quickly and would not answer any questions. Fortunately, Mr. Sanchez now agreed to give Rossi the data stick with all of his reports. Before Rossi turned it over to the NY White Collar division, he plugged it into the laptop for Garcia to copy.

After the data stick had been processed by the NY office, hard copies were made of all of the contents and sent to the DC Prosecutor's office, it would be added as exhibits in the court evidence log for trial.

Although Chelsea was included in the team conference calls regarding the kidnapping she mostly kept busy all day Saturday and Sunday working on the financial report. Sunday afternoon after the team had rescued the Sanchez family and the original evidence report on the data stick had been recovered, she was still working on her own report.

Hotch, Reid, JJ and Garcia finished with their reports and started boxing up all of the evidence that Chelsea either did not need or had finished with. At about 7:00pm when they had finished, Hotch noticed Chelsea rubbing her eyes and said, "I think you need to take a break Chelsea. How much more time do you think you are going to need to finish your report?"

"I should be finished in 2 or 3 hours." She said standing up and stretching.

He nodded, "Unless you have something else you need to do in the morning, I'd suggest Reid take you home to get some rest and come back in the morning with him."

"I don't have any plans for the morning. That sounds like an excellent idea," and turning to Spencer, "I think I need something to eat also."

Spencer smiled, "I'll take you to get anything you want." They all said there goodbyes and headed out of the BAU.

Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss spent several hours interrogating the suspects without any progress. Once they had finalized their statements in NY they boarded the jet to go home around 9:00pm.


	10. Chapter 10

The _State of NY vs. Mr. Randal Jackson and Action Brokerage_ trial was set to start at 1:00pm on Tuesday, April 21st. The defense had unsuccessfully tried to have all of the charges dropped stating that there were rumors that the FBI had tampered with the evidence. The judge denied the claim saying that trials were based on fact, not rumor and the jury would decide. But the judge also warned the prosecution that it would not look fondly on anyone found interfering with the chain of evidence.

The judge used Tuesday to give complete instructions to the jury and to go over the charges against the Defendant. All day Wednesday was allotted to the opening statements from both parties. The prosecution's first witnesses were not called until Thursday morning. To quickly end the threat of a mistrial they chose to start the trial with the rumors of evidence tampering. Rual Sanchez was the first witness called and he was questioned for most of the day, first on the evidence and his office report that was logged in as court exhibits and next on his involvement in the evidence tampering. This trial was not about the kidnapping so most of the details were left out, but enough to show why he did it and not eliminate the rest of the evidence.

Hotch and Reid were both scheduled Friday morning as the BAU witnesses to testify on their involvement in the case. Again the kidnapping was only a small part of the testimony on the financial trail of Action Brokerage. Each detailed how they had been assigned the task and how Reid's special abilities were used in this case. They also described that they had brought in an outside FA to make sure that everything was done correctly.

Again the defense tried to have all of the testimonies thrown out or a new trial that did not allow the mention of the evidence tampering, but the judge denied it. With all of the media attention on the FBI tampering and the fact that a BAU team had reviewed the evidence, the judge felt it would need to be addressed in a future trail also and allowed the trial to continue. He also knew that because another certified FA had studied all of the evidence after it had been sent to the BAU, there was no way to keep out that she only became involved because of the evidence tampering rumors.

Chelsea was called in to testify on Friday afternoon. Hotch gave Reid the rest of the day off to attend with her, but he was on call if a case were to come in. Because of her personal relationship with Reid, the attorney decided to bring that out in the trial as to not look like he was hiding something. So far the trial had consisted of clearing up rumors, proving an unharmed evidence chain and why a Behavioral Analysis Unit was involved in evidence research.

After Chelsea was sworn in and asked her name and occupation, he jumped right into questioning her personal life. "Ms. Lozano, you were brought into analyze this case because of your personal relationship with BAU member Dr. Spencer Reid. Is that correct?"

Even though Chelsea knew this was the tactic that they had planned on taking, it was still unnerving to have her personal life become part of a public court transcript. She was sure that Spencer held the same feelings, but looking at him he just gave her an encouraging smile so she nodded to the attorney and answered the question just like they had practiced. "Yes, I have been dating Dr. Reid since January and that is how he knew that I was a FA. But my relationship with him does not have anything to do with my qualifications or my ability to do this job. I have worked on several cases for the FBI in the past and testified in 2 of them. You will find that I have a excellent reputation and although Dr. Reid recommended me, Agent Hotchner was officially the person that brought me in."

After that part was out of the way, Chelsea described everything that had happened starting with her figuring out the books she was looking at were fake. She gave her official report on the paper trail that showed how Mr. Jackson and the Action Brokerage had conned their clients. Her report was shorter, only containing 5 years of information but was nearly identical to the report Sanchez had given in his testimony. She finished testifying just before the judge called a recess for the weekend. She was relieved that she had finished and had given all of the details clearly and accurately. The attorney had questioned her thoroughly and made sure any term she used was defined in simple language for the jury. Now that Hotch, Spencer and she had finished testifying, it was over unless the defense decided to cross-examine them at a later date. Spencer took her to dinner and that night was the first relaxing time they have had together since the BAU had received the case.

Monday morning several FBI employees from the NY office were called to testify on the evidence and by Tuesday the prosecutors started calling the victims of Mr. Jackson's brokerage account. There were nearly 2,500 clients that were allegedly swindled out of their savings. Although all of them had been deposed, there were 15 scheduled to testify on Tuesday and an additional 8 on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, the prosecutor brought a SEC employee to testify about the complaints that had been received since the case had started. The attorney addressed the court and said that he did not want to waste the time of everyone to hear from all 2,457 alleged victims, he would be placing all of the depositions in evidence and reserved the right to call any of them at a later date if deemed necessary.

As the financial trial against Mr. Jackson continued in DC, the New York prosecutors were still quietly piecing together the kidnapping, evidence tampering and attempted murder charges for Randal Jackson. Mr. Jackson had hired another set of lawyers to help defend himself on that case although official charges had not been brought up yet so no trial date was set. Everyone was sure that Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss would be called for the trial when charges were filed, but many thought once Mr. Jackson was behind bars for the financial crimes, he would accept some sort of plea bargain for that case.

Spencer was relieved that Chelsea would not be mentioned at all in the kidnapping and attempted murder trials, but it was still likely she would need to go to NY and testify in several other trials. Other Action Brokerage employees that were involved in the fraud schemes were headed to trial later this summer and much of the evidence that Chelsea and the BAU had studied could be used in those cases also.

#

When Spencer was not away on a case, he and Chelsea continued to go out on many types of dates. They went out to dinner, movies, bookstores, antique shops and a local pub that had live jazz music. They had been to the rifle club twice for brunch and had gone for a walk and relaxed in conversation on what she called "their bench".

The Randal Jackson trial continued for more three weeks and the jury deliberated for four days before he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years for the embezzlement and investment fraud.

During the three weeks while the trial continued the BAU mostly worked on profiles from Quantico. They were sent on a few cases out of town. The first case was in Cherry Hill, NJ searching for a pedophile that had killed three young boys. Hotch and Reid were still under oath as witnesses on the trial and could be pulled in to testify again at any time, but the court had the information that they were working a case in New Jersey and could be flown back in a few hours if needed.

While working the pedophile case, Emily had been the one to figure out that the brother of the third and last victim had killed him and felt no remorse. Once they had that information, they realized that the lead detective had covered up the murder and had placed evidence to make it look like the pedophile killed all three boys.

When they arrived home Friday night from New Jersey, Chelsea met Spencer, Morgan and Emily for dinner. Chelsea asked her normal questions about saving anyone and how many past victims families now had closure. But before the meal came, Morgan and Emily had described the entire case. Chelsea could see that all three of them were visibly shaken, but Morgan was the hardest hit. After spending many years in the Chicago PD, he took it personally that a peace officer would try to cover up a murder, especially of a child.

Morgan was Spencer's closest friend. He had become like brother to Spencer over the years and was excited to get to know the girl that had obviously won Spencer's heart. Emily immediately liked Chelsea the first time they met. Emily had moved around so much as a child didn't have a lot of close friends outside of the team and she had started to feel close to Chelsea quickly. Morgan also really liked Chelsea and was glad to see how relaxed and comfortable Reid was at dinner. He had watched them together while working and she had easily fit in with everyone on the team, but it wasn't a social situation. They were all focused on the case. Seeing him casually walk with his arm around her waist, open both the car and restaurant doors for her, and pull out her chair all while carrying on a conversation with the group showed him how at ease Reid was with her.

When they had finished talking about the case, Emily asked Chelsea "JJ and I are going to lunch and out shopping tomorrow, why don't you join us?"

Looking at Spencer for approval, "That sounds like fun." Spencer nodded and mentioned he had a lot of work to do on an article he was working on and thought that sounded like a great idea.

The next day Emily came by to pick up Chelsea at noon. Spencer was at her place when she showed up, but was headed out.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry, Reid?" Emily asked.

"Will called this morning to see if I wanted to come by and help watch my Godson" Reid replied. "I know that it was JJ that suggested it. She is hoping that after you all interrogate Chelsea for personal information that Will will be able to get a few things out of me." He continued smiling.

"What do you mean 'interrogate' me?" Chelsea asked concerned.

"I don't like to profile my team, but they are going to ask you ALL kinds of personal questions about our relationship today and they are hoping that Will will be able to get something more out of me." Spencer laughed.

Chelsea looked a bit confused and started to reply, before Emily cut her off talking directly to Reid "So you have a plan to stop the inquisition?"

"Yep, I'm going to come right out and tell him that I know JJ put him up to finding out information about Chelsea and me. He'll reluctantly agree and I'll give him something to make JJ happy and then he and I can call a few of his friends and play poker all afternoon." He said with a smirk.

Emily and Chelsea both started laughing. "So you had JJ figured out all along." Emily joked. "How long until you let Will know you are in on it?"

"Not long, we don't have that long if I want to win some money from the guys." Spencer joked, "Plus I really do want to spend some time with Henry. He's growing so fast."

Emily had not seen this side of Reid before and couldn't help laughing. Chelsea seemed to get over her shock about the whole situation and asked Spencer softly, "What exactly are you going to tell Will about us?"

"Don't worry, nothing personal. Probably just more about how we met and how worried I was before I called you." Spencer said has he hugged her. He kissed her good-bye and said, "Good luck with these ladies. They are going to ask you tons of questions so be prepared." He watched her worried face and said "Relax, you are going to be fine. They really just want to get to know you because you are special to me," and with that he said bye to Emily and left.

Chelsea was still trying to make sense of everything that happened when Emily asked for a tour of her apartment. "I love the view!" She exclaimed as she walked towards Chelsea's kitchen.

Chelsea showed her the whole apartment and Emily asked, "So we all what to know. How is the genius," nodding towards the bed "you know" pause "in bed?"

Chelsea stood there with her mouth open. "Really?" When she didn't receive any response other than a smile and a nod, she answered truthfully, "Genius!" Emily bent over laughing saying something that sounded like 'Good to know' around her laughs.

After they finished the quick tour, Emily said, "OK, time to go. The BAU ladies club is almost in session," walking towards the door.

"BAU Ladies Club?" Chelsea asked.

"That's what Garcia wants to call us. Now that there are 4 women. She didn't think 3 made a club."

"Garcia thinks I'm a member of the BAU Ladies Club?" still a little shocked everything that had happened in the last 30 minutes.

"Of course. You are the girlfriend of a BAU member, plus you helped us solve a case. You are officially a member of the BAU Ladies Club."

Chelsea nodded. She didn't know what to say. She grabbed her purse and was ready to leave not sure what to expect for the rest of the day

Lunch went smoothly and after Emily filled them in on Chelsea's "Genius" comment while Chelsea blushed a deep red, they didn't press her for many personal details. They asked her to describe their first date and she obliged by telling them how shy Spencer had been and how her grandfather had tricked him into asking her out. Smiling at the memory she told them about their first Sunday brunch at the rifle club and that they had spent the entire day together. After that, the four of them talked about family, friends and work and just enjoyed the afternoon.

While shopping JJ picked up a few items for Henry, but mostly they all window-shopped and laughed at some of the fashion trends featured in the store windows. They all made Chelsea feel very welcome and were very vocal that they were happy for both her and Spencer.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Curious what people thought of the case. Was it too long? I wanted Chelsea to really be needed and helpful. I thought it would be a fun way for her to meet and interact with all of the team, but the case seemed to have a life of its own and took 5 chapters to complete. That was not what I expected when I started to write it.

The reason I really wanted to do this story, other than I think Spencer deserves someone special in his live is coming in the next few chapters. I hated the end of _Amplification_. No one seemed to care that Spencer almost died and was in the hospital. I fixed that. :)


	11. Chapter 11

At the end of April, the team was heading home from Buffalo, New York after they had caught the unsub. The man had an extreme case of OCD that led him to kill. He was filming his kills and leaving messages for the police to help stop him, not as a taunt as the police suspected, but because he truly wanted to stop and didn't know how.

After they had realized that the unsub was going back to visit Stanley Wolcott, JJ's motherly instincts had kicked in. Knowing that the young blind boy was with the man that had killed his mother was difficult on everyone, but JJ was the most affected. Right after they had brought the boy home, Reid heard JJ calling Will and asking about Henry.

When they were on the jet heading home, Spencer called Chelsea to let her know he would be home before dinner. Spencer told Chelsea about the case and said he thought JJ could use a night out. "Would you mind if I offered for both of us to babysit Henry tonight, so JJ and Will can have a night out alone?"

Spencer knew Chelsea had babysat several kids when growing up and had spent a lot of time with John and Becky's son when he was an infant. He had all of the book knowledge and had spent time with Henry, but never stayed with him by himself. Chelsea thought that it was a great idea and was excited to help. She had loved Henry when she met him and was interested in seeing how Spencer interacted with his Godson. Spencer talked to JJ and they had everything arranged before the jet landed. Will and JJ weren't about to let a chance at a free babysitter for a night out slip by them.

After Will and JJ and left for the evening, Chelsea pulled Spencer on the couch for a kiss. He pulled back feeling uncomfortable "You need to make up for lost time, Spence. Another teenage activity that you missed growing up is going over to babysit with your girlfriend and making out on the couch," she giggled. "One by one, I'm going to make sure you have every experience teenagers usually have."

He was surprised, "What! Henry is in the next room."

"Relax Spencer, we aren't going to do anything naughty at your friends' house. Just a fun evening of kissing." She said smiling. He relaxed and decided that it sounded like a good way to spend the time together while Henry slept.

#

On the 4th of May the team get a call to help with vehicular murder case. Spencer took a few moments to call Chelsea on the way to the jet. Apologizing that he wouldn't be home for a few days at least, he was on the way to Oregon he explained, "The victims are not only killed in a hit and run, but the driver backed over them to insure they would not get up."

They talked for several minutes before they both said, "I love you." and Chelsea told him "Be Save."

When they arrived home from Oregon, Will, Kevin and Chelsea met the team for dinner and drinks. After the team briefly discussed the case, JJ told everyone about the conversations she had will Gil Bonner. Hotch and Garcia were the only ones that knew about Mr. Bonner. When he had come in and confessed to being the reason for the murders, JJ had discussed it with Hotch and asked Garcia to look into the matter. When it was determined that it had no bearing on the case, the rest of the team didn't need to have the distraction.

Mr. Bonner, who was suffering some type of PTSD after the death of his mother, remembered an accident he had caused the prior year. The guilt lead him to believe that he was reason for the recent murders. JJ was thankful that she had been able to help this man find out that driver of the car that he had accidentally pushed off the road had not been injured. Mr. Bonner would be charged with leaving the scene of an accident, but there would be no jail time. It was the first time that Mr. Bonner had felt OK in the last year. He had harbored so much guilt; he hadn't been sleeping well for months and it had lead to difficulties at work and in his home live.

It was interesting to Chelsea that while JJ was working on the case, she had also cleared up an unsolved accident and freed a man of his guilt. She really did think that this BAU team was made up of miracle workers.

#

Ever since Chelsea found out that Spencer worked with Agent Rossi, she was very excited to have her grandpa meet him. She talked to Spencer about inviting the whole team to dinner and including her grandpa. He thought it was a great idea and talked to the team the next day. She knew that Frank from the Deli downstairs also was interested in meeting Rossi and asked if he would cater the food for the event. As well as the deli, he did some authentic Italian catering from his kitchen and he was delighted to fix the meal. He even offered to do it all at his cost if he was able to meet "the legendary Rossi".

They were fortunate and were not called away on a case the night of the dinner. Chelsea had borrowed both a table and chairs from her mom to accommodate the large group. As well as the 7 member team, Will, Kevin, Bob (Chelsea's grandpa), Frank and Chelsea made 12 that sat for dinner.

Frank outdid himself by making a huge Italian meal for the group. It included: Veal Loin Scaloppini with porcini mushrooms, Spinach & Ricotta Ravioli with butter & sage, Eggplant Parmigiana with Potato Gnocchi,Risotto with Spinach, Sautéed Shrimp, an Antipasto tray, Salad, Garlic Bread and Tiramisu for dessert. He also sent up a couple of his workers to help serve and clean up.

Rossi had offered to bring wine for dinner and was impressed by the amazing Italian spread that was served. He also enjoyed meeting and talking with both Frank and Bob. The night was a success and as Chelsea and Spencer fell into bed that night they were both happy how fun the night had been. Everyone had enjoyed the food and company and no one had left until well after midnight.


	12. Chapter 12

On Thursday, May 14th Spencer received a call from JJ to come into the office ASAP. It was only 5:45 am and everyone was needed at the office by 6:30. She told him not to worry about getting his go bag, just get in the office.

Chelsea woke up when the phone rang and was cuddling up to Spencer as he listened to what she could tell was JJ's voice. He kissed her on the forehead and told her he had to get up and go right away. She was disappointed he couldn't stay in bed a little bit longer. JoAnn, her old roommate, was coming over to help with the closet organization this afternoon and staying the night. Spencer was planning to spend the night at his own place to stay out of the fashion and girl talk. Chelsea had hoped to wake him early to give him a proper good-bye because she knew she would not see him that night and maybe even longer depending on if he were called on a job. She tried not to look too disappointed, she knew if JJ had called at that hour it had to be very important.

Spencer could always read her expression, kissed her and told her "I'm sorry. You're busy tonight and hoped for some time together this morning."

She laughed and said, "Sometimes it's annoying dating a profiler." She rolled away continuing to smile at him. "I know it's important. Just go."

He knew she wasn't upset, kissed her one more time on her cheek and went to get ready.

Spencer arrived at the BAU the same time as Prentiss and Morgan. When they walked off the elevator they could see the bullpen was full of military personnel. They went into the conference room to find out what was going on. They were introduced to General Lee Whitworth, from Fort Detrick and Dr. Linda Kimura, Chief of Special Pathogens at the CDC. Everyone was brought up to speed about an engineered anthrax virus that was airborne and kills most within a day. So far they had 25 confirmed cases with 17 already dead.

There was a media blackout and all of the outgoing calls and emails from the FBI office were being monitored. They did not want to cause a panic. All it would take is one FBI employee telling a family member to stay home and then that person tell someone else to start a chain reaction and panic in the city. Spencer wanted to call Chelsea, just like everyone there wanted to call their loved ones, but Spencer was sure that Chelsea was not planning to leave the apartment. She was baking bread and cookies to go with the dinner she was making for JoAnn and had been to the store the day before. She also planned to clean out the guest room and office closets herself before JoAnn arrived. It did ease his mind knowing that Chelsea would be safe.

#

JoAnn came over about 3:00 pm and they started to pull out all of Chelsea's belongings from the master closet. The closet organization company was coming at 8:00 am the next morning. Chelsea was using this time with JoAnn's help to clean out old and unused items in her closet. She wanted everything ready to hang in the new closet when it was finished. She knew having JoAnn, who had a great sense of style; helping would make it both easier and fun. She had planned a big meal and purchased all of the ingredients to make margaritas. They enjoyed each others company while getting the work done.

By 7:00 pm, they had removed and sorted all of her clothing ready to put into the newly installed closet the next day. Chelsea had picked a cedar wood that had both a classic look and was functional against moths. When the designing team had come to measure and work out all of the dimensions, she described the closet as one side his the other hers. She hadn't asked Spenser to move in yet, but she wanted him to have all of the closet space he needed at her place.

While they drank the margaritas, JoAnn had Chelsea try on every piece of clothing she had not worn in the last 3 months. She also helped Chelsea come up with some new and cute combinations for work outfits mixing the items she had. They were felling good and they were ready to start dinner. Chelsea missed Spencer, but he had called about 5:00 telling her he was on a case and probably wouldn't be able to call her again that night. He didn't even expect to make it back to his apartment; he planned to work all night at the BAU.

#

During the afternoon, Morgan and Reid had been investigating possible suspects involved in the manufacturing of the virus. They were at the house of one of the suspects when Reid found himself in a small lab with the suspect dead of a head wound on the floor. Also on the floor was a broken vile with a white powder spilling out of it. Just as Morgan arrived at the lab, Reid closed the glass door before he entered, keeping Morgan safe from the deadly virus.

As Reid was already exposed to the Anthrax, he chose to stay in the lab to see if he could find the antidote. He was also helping to work on a profile that would find the second unsub whom now was in possession of the deadly virus. Time was of the essence, both because of the large dosage Reid had inhaled in the lab, plus they needed to figure out where the unsub planned to distribute the virus and stop him.

Reid wanted to make two calls while in the lab in case he was not able to survive this attack. He wanted to call his mother, but with her living in the hospital, he would have to contact a nurse or administrator to get her on the phone. He normally did not call her during a business day and someone might start to think something was wrong or his mom might panic and say something herself. He decided to ask Garcia to tape a message for him to send his mother to say goodbye if necessary.

He also wanted to call Chelsea. He knew he had to be especially careful what he said. She would think it unusual for him to call in the middle of a case. He called her around 5:00 and told her he was taking a dinner break. He decided to tell her that the case was a lot of paperwork and he planned to stay at the BAU since he wasn't going to get to see her tonight anyway. He told her that he didn't think he would have a chance to call her later and made sure to tell her he loved her. He wanted her to remember that if something happened to him.

Shortly after those calls, he took a turn for the worse. With the help of Morgan and Garcia, he figured out who the unsub was and Dr. Kimura found an inhaler that was later determined to carry the antidote. Before Reid left the property, the CDC made sure he was stripped and scrubbed down. They burned his clothing because of the porous nature of the fabric and the rest of his belongings were taken to decontamination. He was then taken by ambulance to Walter Reed Medical Center and given the antidote.


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning at about 6:00 when Spencer had pulled through the worst of the systems and was sleeping peacefully on the way to recovery, Morgan called Chelsea. He had wanted to call her the night before after they had solved the case and Spencer had been given the antidote, but Hotch said he could not call until Spencer was officially able to see visitors. With the media and family information blackouts they needed to follow the same protocol for Spencer as they were doing for the other patients.

Morgan made sure that Chelsea knew Spencer was fine before he mentioned he was in the ICU at Walter Reed Medical Center in DC. It really was a special isolation ward, but he could not mention that, especially over the phone.

Before she left, Chelsea asked JoAnn to stay and let the closet company into the apartment. All three closets were empty and ready to have the new system installed. She told JoAnn she could leave as soon as they arrived. She apologized for leaving so early, but she needed to get to Spencer. Chelsea had stayed calm while talking to Morgan, she was digesting the information, but when she was trying to tell JoAnn that Spencer had been injured and was in the hospital, she started to break down. JoAnn was supportive and helped her pull it together so she was able to drive.

On the way to the hospital, Chelsea was listening to the radio and heard news that there had been many deaths from exposure to a natural gas or chemical leak at Quiet Hills Park in Annapolis. She also heard that the survivors had been transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center yesterday afternoon. As of the radio broadcast only 4 of 25 infected people had survived. People were trying to get answers to what had happened, but the hospital staff only said "No Comment." There were unconfirmed reports that the CDC was involved. When Morgan had called, he had told her that Spencer was fine, but her heart was racing and would not feel better until she could see him. She had a very difficult time staying even close to the speed limit; she wanted to get there as soon as possible.

According to the radio broadcast, the park incident had happened at noon two days ago and the first deaths were reported very early yesterday morning. Spencer had been with her that morning when JJ had called him in for a local case. Now thinking about his call yesterday afternoon, was he trying to say goodbye? He had told her he loved her twice during the conversation, but he usually ended the conversation with that. Had she been distracted by JoAnn's company and didn't really listen to what he was saying?

Chelsea's mind was racing as she tried to remember the exact words Morgan had used earlier. He had said he was admitted to the hospital at 7:00 the night before, so if he was exposed to the same toxin, it wasn't at the same park. He had been infected someplace else yesterday. She hoped Morgan hadn't been calling to let her see him for the last time. She was starting to hyperventilate and knew she had to get control of herself. Getting in an accident wasn't going to do Spencer any good.

On the phone, she had tried to question Morgan, but he had been very evasive. Remembering that and now hearing the radio reports of possible CDC involvement, she started to believe it was some sort of national security event. By the time she arrived at the hospital at around 7:30 am she had calmed herself down enough to make the decision not to ask questions about what had happened. She was sure she would not get any answers or at least not a truthful one anyway, but she wanted to find out how he was and if he was going to be OK. What had happened was not as important to her as how he was feeling.

As she was walking in, Penelope was leaving. She ran over to hug Chelsea and said, "I wanted to call you last night, but they wouldn't let me." She continued to ramble, "I should go, and I'm probably not supposed to talk to..." she stopped mid sentence worrying about protocol.

Chelsea hugged her back "I promise I won't ask any questions other than is he OK?"

Penelope smiled and relaxed a little saying, "Yes, he's good and he's really strong. I made the doctor promise me that she knew he was going to be OK before I'd leave."

Chelsea felt much better. She didn't realize she had been holding her breath waiting to hear Penelope's response. "Thank you. Have you been here all night?"

"Yes, Morgan is still up there, he sent me home to get some rest. You know all of the team didn't sleep well knowing he was here, but they would only let two of us in there at a time. There was no way that Morgan wasn't going to stay," she smiled as she said the last part.

"That doesn't surprise me. I'll go relieve him and let him get some rest also. What floor am I going to and do I need to sign in with someone?" She was extremely anxious to see him but was feeling better for the first time since she had received Morgan's call.

Garcia told Chelsea where to go to sign in and told her that Hotch had added her name to the visitors list. Chelsea hugged her again and whispered another thank you for staying with Spencer all night. Garcia left with a smile thinking that was a lot easier than she had thought it would be when she had seen Chelsea walking in.

When Chelsea arrived at the floor she could see Spencer through the glass partitions lying in bed with his head slightly elevated and talking to Morgan. He still had an oxygen tube under his nose and an IV in his left arm. Otherwise he looked well. She had been afraid of what she might see. As she approached she saw a female doctor leaving his room.

She looked at her nametag and addressed her, "Dr. Kimura, hello, I'm Chelsea Lozano, Spencer Reid's girlfriend." She preempted any protocol speech by saying, "I'm not going to ask any questions about his illness, but I would like to know how he is doing. Specifically, will any of his motor functions or mental facilities be affected? I want to know what to expect when I go in there." She paused a minute and before Dr Kimura could answer she continued, "I guess you know his special abilities and if any of that were to be diminished because of this illness he would like to know about it."

At first Dr. Kimura was surprised. She had dealt with dozens of family members already during the night and this morning. They all continued to press her on the details of the illness and their loved ones deaths. She had seen Chelsea's name on the approved visitor list and assumed she either knew what had happened or had guessed enough to know it couldn't be talked about. "Most of the damage was in his lungs, but he is young and healthy so it should mostly heal and not cause him any long term problems. I know he is not a smoker, but he should also stay away from smoking areas for at least the next few months. He will have a horrible sounding cough for several days, but that is just his body's reaction to the damage. He also probably will have severe headaches for the next couple of days. We took a brain scan and nothing unusual showed up. He should probably have a scan done every few years just to ensure there is not a future problem, but I don't expect anything to arise."

"Thank you, doctor. Do you know when he will be able to go home?"

"I don't see any reason he can't be released this afternoon. We need to get him up and walking a bit this morning and after the final dose of an antibiotic that is in his current IV is done, we can release him. He needs to rest for the rest of the week and should be cleared for duty after that. Will you be able to stay with him for a few days? I'd hate to send him home alone."

Chelsea smiled held out her hand and said, "Yes. I'll stay with him. I work from home, which also helps. I don't even need to leave. Thank you." She then went to see Spencer.

As Dr. Kimura watched Chelsea walked into Reid's, room, she realized that due to her exhaustion and the fact that Chelsea had not pressed her on any cause of the illness, she had let her guard slip and told her more details that she normally would have told a non-family member.

Morgan saw Chelsea before Spencer did. As she walked in he said "Hi, Chelsea" and watched his friend's eyes light up. Morgan had as big of a smile as Spencer did.

Chelsea went over to the bed and leaned over to kiss Spencer on the cheek. "I'm so glad you are OK. I don't know what I would have done if something had happened to you." She looked like she was almost ready to cry.

Spencer reached up and took her face in both of his hands and kissed her on the lips. "I'm doing great. I am so glad you are here." Turning to Morgan, "You called her?"

"Yep. As soon as I got the OK from the doctor and Hotch, I asked her to come in." He turned to Chelsea and started to apologize for not calling her sooner.

She cut him off, "I'm here now that's what matters. I ran into Penelope on the way in and she told me you both stayed with him all night. Thank you."

"Of course, nothing could have pried me out of that seat." He said smiling and pointing to what looked like a very uncomfortable chair.

Chelsea went over to hug him and said, "Go home and get some rest. You deserve it. I'll stay with him until I can take him home this afternoon."

"This afternoon, really?" Spencer sounded very glad to be able to leave.

"Yes, I just talked to Dr. Kimura on my way in and you can be released today. You just have to rest for a week and stay away from smokers." She had moved to his other side and sat down in the chair that Morgan had just vacated. She took his hand and brought it up to her lips for a kiss.

"I am tired. I'm too old to sleep sitting up in a chair." Morgan chuckled as he said good-bye. "The rest of the team plans to stop by around lunch time to check in with you."

Spencer squeezed Chelsea's hand, "I'm so sorry I couldn't call you."

"Shush, it's OK. I understand that you can't always call me." She again brought his hand to her lips. "I asked the doctor if there would be any lingering effects and she was sure there would not be. I don't know if you remember that they did a brain scan, but they didn't find anything. She suggested having another one every couple of years just to be sure, but she sounds confident that everything is normal."

"She really said I could go home today?"

"Yes. Probably not long after lunch and all your friends come to see you."

They talked some and sometimes sat in a comfortable silence. Spencer did fall asleep for about a half an hour twice. His body was still recovering and rest is one of the best ways to heal.

Around 12:30 in the afternoon Hotch, JJ, Rossi and Prentiss arrived at the door. Spencer had just awoken from one of his brief naps and was feeling good.

Chelsea stood up and went to greet everyone. Hotch put his hand on Chelsea's arm in a protective manner and started to say something. Chelsea was sure he was going to try and apologize also so she just smiled and told them that since the hospital only allowed two visitors at a time, she would go down to the cafeteria and get some lunch to let the team see him in pairs.

Emily spoke up, "Why don't I go with you to get lunch. I'm starving and I always love hospital cafeteria food," she joked. "Hotch, maybe they will bend the rules and let the three of you go in together and I'll come back and visit with Chelsea in a little while."

Hotch nodded and said, "Thank you. I'm sure that will be fine. We'll see you in a little while" and the three of them went in the room to see Spencer.

Chelsea smiled and walked down the hall with Emily. "You love hospital food, huh? Next you'll tell me that your favorite dessert is in a vending machine."

"It is! Oreos. I LOVE Oreos and you can get them in almost all vending machines." She was now laughing. "I bet the food will be better than a protein bar."

Chelsea smiled at the memory of the first time she had met Emily when she had offered her a protein bar to help keep her alert for the case. "I don't know. I good protein bar is always appreciated."


	14. Chapter 14

At 3:00, Dr. Kimura came in with the discharge papers and went over a few instructions. He needed rest and to drink lots of fluids. Water, juice and Gatorade were good choices. Only liquid and soft foods for the remainder of the day, but there were no other dietary restrictions after that. It was OK to have a cup of coffee in the morning, but for the first few days try and limit it to just one, especially as long as he had any headaches. He needed to call and schedule a follow-up appointment with her at the end of next week and at that time she anticipated she would clear him for active duty.

Morgan had asked her to bring in some clothes for Spencer when he had called, he didn't mention that his clothes had to be destroyed and all of his other belongings had been decontaminated. Reid changed into the sweat pants, t-shirt and converse she had brought him. He smiled at the choice of mix-matched socks she had picked out. All of the items had been at her apartment and she had not needed to stop anywhere on the way to the hospital.

When he was ready to go, they ordered a wheelchair for his release and told her to meet him at the front entrance with her car.

On the drive home, she asked the question she was hoping she knew the answer to, "Did you want to go home to your place or mine?"

He reached over and held her hand while they were at a stoplight at the exit of the hospital. "Your apartment. When you mentioned going home earlier, that is the only place I thought of." She smiled and looked like she was going to cry again. She couldn't even speak to tell him how happy that made her.

When they got back to her apartment, she was excited to see the new closets and wanted to show him all of the work that had been done. JoAnn had called her around lunchtime to see how Spencer was doing and told Chelsea that she was planning to stay and make sure everything was done correctly. Chelsea had tried to protest, but JoAnn had insisted.

When they walked in, she realized that JoAnn had also put everything away after the closets had been done. First she showed Spencer the office. There had been a single unused clothes rod across the entire double closet, now the closet was full of shelving from floor to ceiling and nearly empty.

"I've been waiting for the best moment to ask you this, but I don't know when the best moment will come. I'm just going to ask. Would you be interested in moving in here with me? I'd really love to have you here all of the time and your already are here most nights…"

He cut her off with a kiss and told her "Yes. I can't think of anyplace I'd rather be. I don't even think of my old place as mine anymore. I feel comfortable here with you."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a long kiss. "You are making me a very happy girl." She smiled as she told him all about the closet changes she had made. "I was hoping you would say yes, and I planned the closet changes for your moving in."

They were still standing at the entrance to her office and his arm was wrapped around her waist as she told him "Look how much room there is in this closet for your books and the other items you have stored in boxes at your place. I thought you could bring your favorite chair and floor lamp and put it in the corner. That chair," pointing to a blue fabric wingback chair, "is not anything special and I know you love to read in your chair. You can read while I'm at my desk."

She was now excitedly talking about him moving in as they were walking to her bedroom. "I really want this to feel like our place; not that you moved into my place. Let me know what pieces of furniture you want to bring over. We will work out where to show all of your display pieces you have out in your apartment. Maybe we can put your writing desk in the master bedroom?" she continued to talk about his stuff.

"Stop." Spencer laughed as he sat on the side of her bed. "All I really want is to be here with you. I appreciate you trying to make me feel at home, but I already do."

"Thank you, but I want this to be your place as much as mine and all of your personal items are a part of that. We will fit things in all over the apartment. OK?"

He smiled a thanks as she started looked around the room. The only things still on the floor were the clothes that needed repair. They had moved all of the items to be sent to the thrift store to the guest room last night. Chelsea went across the room and opened the doors to the walk-in closet. JoAnn had neatly put away all of her clothes more efficiently than she would have herself. She mentally made a note to send her friend a gift for all of her help and support.

Looking at the closet, it even surprised Chelsea how much room there was. There had always been extra room to accommodate the clothes Spencer had stored here, but with the new construction, it had been efficiently set up so half of the closet was empty except for Spencer's things. Her clothes were on one side with slots filled with her shoes and shelves for her jeans, hats and some other items. From where Spencer was sitting he could see inside the closet as she pointed and told him, "This whole side is open for your things." There was one small section with a long hanging area and most of the space was an efficient double hanging section. There were slots for shoes, and even a few pull out drawers for watches, socks and other under garments. Spencer was almost speechless. "I can't believe how much room there is." Spencer thought it looked like something out of a home magazine.

"I tossed out a few of my college outfits, things that didn't fit right and things I never wore. I should have done that a couple of years ago, but never had the motivation before. But most of the space is just because of good planning. I really hoped you would say yes."

She told him about the guest room closet. It was redone in two different sections. One half was planned to stay completely empty to accommodate guests' belongings when needed. The other side had been set up to store winter apparel. She told him there was plenty of room for both of their winter coats, boots and other items.

Spencer didn't know what to say. "Thank you for everything. I'm very glad you were at the hospital today and I can't believe you did all of this for me."

"For us," she corrected him. "JoAnn was a huge help and we had a good time. Now I feel terrible that I was having fun while you were…" she paused and said, "not well." She knew he understood that she had a good idea of what had happened and that he couldn't talk about it.

Spencer smiled at her and said, "I'm glad you were having a good time. I was thinking about you and knew with everything going on, you wouldn't try to call me. I would not have been able to answer and it would have made me sad."

He was thinking how lucky he was that she was not pressing the issue of what had happened the day before. He was not able to talk about any of the details of how or why he had been sick. In most cases only a husband or wife would actually get a call if an agent was involved in any national security issue, but Hotch had made an exception for Chelsea. Hotch was a very good profiler and knew that once Chelsea would be happy he was well and not push the issue of his illness. He thought having Chelsea around would be good for Reid.

The only question she asked on the drive home was if he had been given any pain medications. She was very aware that even one dose could compromise his sobriety and she needed to know if she should call her grandpa when they arrived home. He said he had been in pain, although he did not tell her how bad the pain had been, but he had insisted on no narcotics. She laughed when he told her that he thought he even scared Dr. Kimura a bit when he forcefully declined any medications.

He was still sitting on the edge of the bed when he pulled her down close and started to unbutton her blouse and kiss her. She pulled back and told him she didn't want to get him over tired and he needed to rest. He just smiled and said, "I've been in bed all day resting and I've been thinking about doing this since you first arrived at the hospital this morning."

She kissed him back and helped him remove both her blouse and his t-shirt. They moved to turn down the bed. All thoughts of moving his belongings out of their minds. They were only thinking of each other and they were both glad to be home.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I hope you liked my ending. On the show it looked like Morgan was the only one that cared about Reid getting sick or that he nearly died. I always believed that the others came to visit; it just didn't make it in the episode so I wrote it myself. :)

I also felt the same way about the ending of _Faceless, Nameless_ when Reid was shot in the knee. I know that everyone needed to try and catch Foyet, but at the end, the team was seen at the hospital visiting Hotch with no mention of Reid. In my next story, I am going to address that and how Hotch found some help in his recovery. He doesn't have any family in the area and his ex-wife and child were put into protective custody. I think he needs the support of friends when he is released from the hospital.

Anyway… that is what I have planed for my next book. I just posted the first 2 chapters of Book Three and it is called The Support of Family and Friends.

I also posted a One-shot called _Home at Last_. It is a cute story about Spencer moving his things into Chelsea's place.I originally planned this to be the first chapter of Book Three, but felt it was better to stand on it own. I reposted it as a One-Shot and posted the first 2 chapters of Book Three today.


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